There is No Reconciliation
by Stormbringer951
Summary: Post-Born to Run. John and Cameron are trapped in an unfamiliar future. In the present, the modern-day Resistance and Kaliba prepare to mobilize as Connor and Skynet's respective plans draw closer to fruition. John/Cameron.
1. Prologue

**CHAPTER ONE: PROLOGUE**

_The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war that we know about peace, more about killing that we know about living._

- Omar Bradley

**Serrano Point Resistance Bunker Complex, Avila Beach, California, 19th April 2033.**

General John Connor watched around him as the bubble techs hurried through the final pre-jump checklists, their chatter muted by the idling roar of the gas turbines. Tech-Com Security personnel stationed around the room watched silently from behind the darkened visors of their helmets.

Below on the Time Displacement Chamber floor, men and women stripped, piling their clothes in a heap to one side. The Resistance was thrifty and fatigues, especially those treated to minimize their infrared signatures, were difficult to come by.

"Sir? It's ready. Critical systems are green across the board, we're powered up and ready on your go."

John mused on the man's choice of words. He wasn't a physicist or an engineer and he didn't understand what they said at least half the time, but he honestly couldn't think of any non-critical systems on a TDE. It was at times like these that he suspected his Sci-Tech personnel suffered from a chronic case of optimism.

Below him, the nude figures waited on the pad, heads tilted up to look at him. If any of them were discomfited by the experience, they tried not to show it – only two of the older troopers even bothered to make some concessions to modesty.

"Do it," he said.

The Machines had done a lot of damage before Security retook the lower levels. The techs had crawled over the systems a dozen times and announced that everything was okay, but it was obvious to anyone with a working brain that their patch-jobs weren't exactly up to Skynet's original spec. He wondered if the soldiers down below cared.

The generators started to spin up.

"Transit in five …" the loud-hailer boomed.

The figures huddled closer together. The radius of the chronoportation sphere was limited: five adult humans could just about fit, with a little discomfort. A little discomfort was preferable to what happened when someone stuck bits out the bubble.

"... in four ..."

"Good luck," he whispered, "and good hunting."

They couldn't hear him over the background noise, but that didn't matter. They'd need all the luck they could get.

The raid on Depot 2 and the near-repeat here had finally convinced his fellow generals that time displacement tech was more trouble than it was worth. In their minds, getting rid of the remaining TDEs was a small price to pay to ensure that the Machine Remnant couldn't get at them.

John had reluctantly agreed. In principle, they were right; the problem with any new technology was that, sooner or later, it fell into the wrong hands. More pragmatically, John wished that he'd had another month to prepare.

"... three …"

The generators were up to speed now. Sparks began to play over the pad. The team were huddled together shoulder to shoulder, crouched down with heads bent.

"... two …"

The air crackled with energy.

"... one …"

The bubble coalesced.

John slitted his eyes but didn't avert them. The flashes of light were dazzling, but they were nothing compared to the destructive energy of a plasma bolt. He could stand it. He watched.

Tech-Com Special Operations personnel were volunteers. They'd known what they were getting into, but this surpassed any sane expectations. His men were giving up nothing less than their chance at living in a world at peace. For him. A bitter smile flitted across his lips for just an instant. He wondered how willing they would be if his name wasn't John Connor.

The bubble shrank, collapsing to a pinprick of light. And then nothingness.

As the storm died away, the techs ran their diagnostics: hardware integrity checks, recalibration, condition monitoring, and so on. It was pointless given what would happen next and they knew it, but ingrained procedure was stronger than reason.

When it was all over, John turned to the head of his close protection detail. Tech-Com Security personnel were experienced soldiers – they had to be, in a world where any outsider could be a skinjob – but John had always felt that Sergeant Mason had come extra-grizzled. The veteran passed John his plasma rifle without further cues.

The general took it with a grunt of effort. The high-intensity plasma guns Security used were weighty hunks of metal that clocked in at twice the weight of an M-16. Only a terminator could heft them effortlessly. He shouldered the weapon and squeezed the trigger.

He saw a line of white fire connected the muzzle and the TDE's control unit for the fraction of a second before the blink reflex cut in. The smell of burning metal assailed his nostrils.

He opened his eyes. The techs backed up against the wall sported sullen, sour or apprehensive looks but that was too bad for them. The other components could be dismantled for salvage, but the integrated circuit boards had to be destroyed. Being slagged with a plasma round was just the most symbolic way of doing it.

It said that the window of opportunity had been slammed shut. It was a nice capstone for the Machine War. That was that. It was over. For him, at any rate.

* * *

**Los Angeles, California, 25th August 2008.**

Pain blossomed like a delicate flower.

It was a singular experience. The human language couldn't do it justice; it had no frame of reference. One moment, they had been huddled together. He had felt the warmth of skin contact, the feel of breath and the coolness of the air. The next, the world flickered. Reality collapsed and sensation overloaded. There was heat, burning like the heart of a star, and the cold of absolute zero, and light. And then, as if coming from a great distance, arrival.

The chronoportation sphere discharged violently around them.

Alex looked up. The five of them were sprawled in a hemispherical crater. The point of incidence was in the middle of an open grassy area, although they were somewhat concealed on two sides by nearby vegetation. The low levels of ambient noise suggested this was a suburban neighbourhood.

He stood up, suppressing the superficial complaints from his leg muscles. The late night air wasn't particularly cold, but the breeze still raised goosebumps on his skin. He diverted more resources to maintaining homeostasis.

They had to move. Although there was nobody in immediate sight, the sound and fury of their arrival might attract unwanted attention. Unfortunately, the humans were still prostrate on the floor. They seemed uninjured.

He leaned over the closest, a blonde-haired young woman. His implant computer automatically supplied her name: _Eleanor Weinbaum_. He didn't pull up the personnel file.

"Hello? Can you hear me?" he asked.

She stirred. He reached out to shake her by the shoulder and, with surprising speed for a semi-conscious woman, grasped his wrist. Her grip was surprisingly firm. Her eyes opened. She stared at him uncomprehendingly for two seconds before letting go.

She slowly got to her hands and knees, stretching each muscle out in turn. Alex regarded the scars across her arms and back with interest. Resistance soldiers usually bore scars, but they tended to be burns or shrapnel wounds. These made him think of knives. Interesting. Across one shoulder was tattooed a broken cogwheel, a common affectation among Connor's soldiers.

"You okay?"

"Yeah, thanks." Her face was almost bloodless. "I'm all right, infiltrator. See to the others."

They all showed more or less similar symptoms. Nausea, stress, muscle aches. Even he felt a little shaken, although he had far more control over his body's stress reactions than any baseline human. Something had obviously gone wrong, though the error seemed to be relatively minor. A serious calibration error or field instability could have resulted in the averaging of the subject matter over a comparatively large volume of spacetime.

Alex's lips twitched.

"What're you grinning at, infiltrator?"

He looked back. Sergeant Holden, the team's second-in-command, was on one knee, hands massaging her temples.

"Nothing, sir. Any one you can walk away from, right?"

She looked at him askance, but he kept his expression inscrutable. Politeness was a useful tool. It clouded the subtle cues people used to determine social hierarchy, and the way they reacted to that uncertainty told him more than they realised.

"Yeah. The four-eyed bastards fucked up, no surprises there."

"Alexander, Tara." They turned. It was the Captain. He was pale and sweat beaded his face. "What are you standing around for? I'd like to be out of here before any gawkers arrive."

They set off, pale shapes in the darkness.

The local clothing store was isolated and, rather luckily, the owner had left the wireless security cameras connected to the web rather than on a true closed circuit. Alex transmitted his own commands, tilting their fields of view until they surveyed nothing at all. The cameras were pure security theatre; if nothing else, they could've manually disabled the cameras. They dressed quickly, and cleaned out the tills before leaving.

They holed up in a discount motel for the night. There were plans to be made. They needed a secure safe house, identification, gear and more money. Tech-Com had a list of reliable underworld contacts (at least, the contacts had told Tech-Com that their younger selves would be reliable) and other Resistance cells could supply some of their needs. Connor had ways and ways.

The first complication came with the leading news story. The grainy video feed from the primitive CRT proclaimed **TECH COMPANY BOMBED**. This was accompanied by a montage of shaky camera footage: screaming crowds, armed police, a burning skyscraper and, finally, surveillance photos of a teenager and an older woman. The teen was recognisable as a younger John Connor. The woman was identified as Sarah Connor, the notorious domestic terrorist. The newsreader informed them that she was armed and extremely dangerous and should not be approached.

The commonly repeated aphorism was that no plan ever survived contact with the enemy. In this case, it seemed that nobody had considered the possibility that their plans wouldn't survive contact with their oblivious ally. There was a moment of horrified silence.

"Shit," Sergeant Holden spat.

* * *

**Author's Notes: **Very special thanks to _**JMHthe3rd**_, an excellent writer and a patient beta-reader, for reading through interminable drafts of this story.

Feedback, especially in-depth critique, is appreciated. They say that your first 1,000,000 words aren't going to be great, and I'm a long way off that mark. Thoughtful, harsh critique is preferable (pedantic nit-picking welcomed).

This story started life as a mental exercise in world-building and snowballed from there. Terminator isn't my favourite science fiction universe, but The Sarah Connor Chronicles trod some interesting ground. Some ideas were well-executed, others … not so much. For much of it's run, it failed. But it failed _upwards_ (if that makes any sense to you at all). So anyway, my story grew out of that.

This is not a continuation story that attempts to write Season 3; it's telling the story of John Connor the way I envision it. This story is about John Connor and the War Against the Machines. It's about the people and the world during and after that war. Elements from the movies and expanded universe materials will be cherry-picked and integrated into the story and world-building. Some minor technical details which I find overly implausible will be put up against a wall and shot in the services of drama and internal consistency.

Revision 7, 14/10/2011.


	2. Old Friend of Mine

**CHAPTER TWO: THE NEW WORLD**

**Los Angeles, California, 2027.**

John knew he'd fucked up big time.

He was standing in the cold being stared down by a bunch of Resistance fighters, dressed in nothing but his father's coat, talking to a Derek who didn't know him and, to top it off, Cameron's double was petting a dog. Under the circumstances, John felt that staying upright and conscious was an achievement of sorts.

"So," Derek asked, "what the hell are you doing in my brother's coat?"

"I," John began, and stopped. He tried to think, but the sight of Derek and Kyle and Cameron had his brain jammed in neutral. At this point, the cogs in his head were spinning free and loose. He grasped at a few mental straws. "There were Machines. Following me, I mean. I got lost, didn't know where I was. Where I am."

Derek looked down pointedly.

"My clothes were soaked. I was just drying them out when the Machines …" he trailed off.

To his ears, the explanation sounded contrived and thin, but it seemed to hold at least a little water with the Resistance fighters. At least, nobody had shot him yet. On the other hand, Derek was giving him one of _those_ looks. It didn't escape John's notice that his uncle's hands were fiddling with the oversized rifle at his side.

He thought about adding to his explanation, but decided against it. Adding more detail would just be buying more rope to hang himself with.

"Yeah, all right then," Derek said slowly. "Where are you from? Which bunker?"

Ah. John didn't know the names of any Resistance bases. Even if he had, it would be useless. One quick check would reveal that nobody knew him. The word _Grey_ would pick itself out in lights in his uncle's head, and John would be lined up against the nearest wall.

"I'm not from around here."

"I see that. Well, you're lucky we found you then. People aren't too friendly to outsiders around here."

The dog's head turned. It growled low in its throat, the sound quiet but full of menace. John swallowed. Derek's men tensed, glancing around this way and that. One of them pointed his weapon at him.

"Hey, easy. Guns down. Kyle, take Ben and Allison and see what's happening. Connor, it's okay. We don't shoot people just cos we don't know them. Everyone's just a little high strung."

Derek was walking towards him. He'd closed the distance before John remembered that, when he wanted to be, his uncle was a callous son of a bitch. But Derek couldn't, could he? John was supposed to be the leader of the Resistance. If Derek shot him, it would break the space-time continuum, or something. That couldn't –

Derek's arm came up and his fist connected with John's jaw. The world lurched sickeningly, black spots dancing in front of his eyes, and then darkness.

He gradually became aware that his eyes were open and he was staring at the ceiling in dull incomprehension. It took him a few more seconds to climb back to full consciousness as his brain took a full inventory and reoriented itself.

His jaw hurt like a motherfucker and he had a killer headache. There was a light bulb above him, casting a dim orange glow across the concrete ceiling. He was lying in bed on a lumpy mattress, covered in a scratchy blanket. He was also naked. Why the hell was he naked?

He tried to sit up. White and purple stars flashed in warning in front of his eyes. His vision skewed. He threw out an arm to prop himself up, before carefully sinking back down. He squeezed his eyes shut. If he ignored it, maybe the headache would return the favour.

"Careful there. I caught you a bit harder than I meant to. You were out for a while, but Doc says that you've only got a light concussion. Nothing a bit of rest won't sort out."

He opened his eyes. Derek's face swam into view.

"Ugh?"

Pain spiked through John's skull when he spoke. He cautiously probed his jaw with his tongue. It seemed to be intact, and none of his teeth seemed to be loose.

"Good news. Our tech checked you out. No beacons, target designators or other nasty micro-tech surprises. You're clean."

John took care to enunciate clearly: "Was knocking me out fucking necessary?"

"Sure. We lead you in here all trusting, and half an hour later a Skynet heavy squad's knocking down the door. It's happened before. Or I could've stood there playing twenty questions with you right up until the Metal caught us with our pants down."

"Metal?" John exhaled.

"Yeah. We spooked a couple of aerodyne drones out there."

"Right. You've made your point."

Derek patted the side of the pallet in what was probably supposed to be a reassuring manner. "Then you'll understand why we're going to keep you here until someone vouches for you. Don't look at me like that. You've got to see my perspective."

"I thought you said I checked out," John croaked.

"I said you were probably weren't a Grey. That doesn't mean nothing anyway. There's plenty of scumbags around. I've got over a hundred people here. I can't risk them just because I think you look trustworthy."

"Vouch for me?"

No. This couldn't happen. This was a joke. This was _Derek. _Fuck. Kyle wouldn't know him. Neither would Riley. He wouldn't trust that bitch Jesse to vouch for him, even if she was still alive. Who else was there?

"Sarah Connor?" he hazarded. It was worth a try. Mom's face had been plastered all over TV, and it wasn't like she couldn't have founded the Resistance instead.

"Sister?"

"Mother. James Ellison?"

"Doesn't ring a bell."

"Father … Bonilla?"

"Never heard of him. I'll ask around though. Anyone else?"

John went through his mental filing system and came up blank. He shook his head.

"Right. You'd better try to get some sleep, John. There's a damp cloth by your bed for your head."

The footsteps receded.

He'd be stuck in this stupid cell for the rest of his life because nobody he knew recognised him in this fucking weird-ass alternate universe. This couldn't happen to him. It just … couldn't.

"Oh, and one more thing, Connor. One day, you're going to tell me how you're clean, and healthier than the next five people I know."

The door slammed.

John slumped back. This wasn't supposed to happen. And Weaver had just abandoned him! Was this her idea of a joke? Well, she'd won bonus irony points for getting the leader of the Resistance locked up by his loyal men, and how did that work anyway? It wasn't going to help her get her AI back.

He cradled his head in his hands.

* * *

The cell door opened. John looked up without interest. He'd had several days to get used to the routine. There would be a tray with a mug of water and a bowl of what could be charitably described as food. He'd asked, and they'd said it was 'protein'. It was bland and tasteless, but he was hungry enough to eat it anyway.

This time, it was Cameron's doppelgänger who entered.

Up close, he could see that she wasn't Cameron. There were differences. She was thinner, her face more drawn. And there was something about her, a sort of nervous fidgeting energy that was more distinctive than all the physical differences.

He sat down on the pallet, tray balanced across his knees, and picked up the spoon. She squatted down against the opposite wall as he dug in.

"Hi," she said.

He swallowed a mouthful. "Hey."

"I met you already the other day."

"Yeah."

He continued eating, while not-Cameron watched him silently over the bowl. She seemed to have something on her mind.

"Look, Derek says you aren't a Grey."

"I'm not."

"Okay. And you say you're not from around here."

"No."

"You're not one of us," she blurted out, "and you don't look like a tunnel rat either. I took a good look at you when we brought you in. You don't have scars! You're clean. It's like you don't even go out at all! That's not right. Only Greys and … and …" she looked away.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"What?"

"Well. There's … I mean, I heard there was this place up near Sierra Madre. Sayles said one of his buddies had been there once. He said they had boys and girls there, for people who could pay."

"And you think –"

"Well, you were naked! And you're clean, and you obviously know shit about surviving out here. It's not like you gave us a better explanation."

John coughed, spraying specks of mush across the floor. The cough turned into a chuckle and then a laugh. He couldn't help it; he could only hold it in for so long before they found their own outlet.

"What? What's so funny?"

"I'm not. Really."

"Well, who are you then?"

"My name's John Connor." _I'm the leader of the Resistance. _"I'm nobody important."

The girl snorted. "I'm Allison, not that names tell you anything."

_My name's Allison. You're freaking me out. I'm Allison, from Palmdale._ Oh God, he'd thought that was just Cameron being weird. And now he found out that this was the real Cameron? He'd known that terminators were based off real people, but he'd never expected that knowledge to smack him in the face.

"You're staring at me."

"Sorry." He wiped his fingers on the side of his pants and shook her outstretched hand. Her callused grip was firm. Cameron's had always been oddly delicate, as if she was afraid that she might hurt him. "You just look like someone I used to know. Someone I knew. Sorry."

Her face softened a little. It made her seem older. "Is she … you know?"

"I don't know. I came here to find her."

"Did the Machines take her? Everyone around here gets taken to Century. I've seen it before. They've got fences and turrets and tanks. Nobody can get in or out now. Kyle wants to storm the wire but they won't let him. It's too dangerous."

John shrugged. "I'll find her, wherever she is. I owe her. She's saved my life, more than once."

"You're going to get yourself captured and _taken to Century?_" Allison looked impressed. No doubt she'd spit on him if she found out that he was here to rescue her cyborg double. "Look –"

The door swung open. A tall black guy and a red-haired woman strode in like they owned the place. Derek's crew looked like post-apocalyptic militiamen. These new arrivals wouldn't have looked out of place in a sci-fi special forces team. They wore black jumpsuits rather than faded fatigues, and the man had a bulky future-tech rifle slung across his back. The woman carried a sleeker, long-barrelled weapon.

Both Allison and John froze.

"Could you please leave, soldier?" the woman said. She didn't even look directly at Allison; her eyes were riveted on John.

Allison straightened up, but stood her ground.

"Why?"

"Because I just asked you to leave."

"Sumner, what's wrong?" Allison addressed the other new arrival instead.

"Sorry, Allie. It's official business. Don't argue." Sumner turned to his companion. "Is that him?"

Allison threw the woman a suspicious glance, and left muttering under her breath.

"I think so. He looks younger than I remember though."

Younger than she remembered? Who the hell did they think he was? The way things were going, it would be just his luck if there was some mass-murdering bastard who looked just like him in topsy-turvy world.

"Is that a yes or a no, Sav?"

"My judgement call?" The woman considered, twirling a few strands of long red hair between her fingers. "Yeah, it's him."

"All right. John Connor, my name's Sumner, with Resistance Special Operations. She's Weaver."

Read hair. 'Sav'. Red hair. Weaver. John finally put two and two together. Well, he'd never claimed to be the genius that his mother thought he was. He gawked at Savannah Weaver.

"Remember me?" She grinned, showing pearly white teeth.

John opened his mouth to say something, and closed it again. She'd been a little girl a few days ago.

"Been a long time since I saw you, Connor. Thank you, by the way."

He grunted. He didn't trust himself to speak. Fortunately, Sumner saved him the effort by throwing him a bundle of clothes.

John changed awkwardly, trying to shield himself with the fatigues while stripping off the rags Derek had found for him. Sumner looked away politely but he could feel Savannah's amused gaze on him. That was wrong in so many ways because, well, she was supposed to be a little girl.

The worn fatigues were a little too large, but they were a world of improvement over the cast-offs he'd been wearing before.

John emerged from the cell and came face to face with Kyle. His father was talking to two more men decked out all in black. When he saw John, he grinned.

"Hey, Connor. Looks like you've got some high and mighty friends."

"Who're you calling high and mighty, Reese?" Sumner said. The two men clasped arms.

"Well, you're taller than me for a start. How's the dirty tricks department been treating you?"

"It's neat. You shouldn't have turned him down, Kyle. They might even be able to teach you a thing or two. And we get all the cool toys."

"Yeah. Fancy." Kyle eyed the Spec Ops uniforms. They wore tactical assault vests, webbing gear, helmets with flip-down optics. Kyle wore an olive green coat. "And the kid? He looks like the tunnel rat at ration call. I can get him a plasma rifle out of the armour at least."

"No you don't," Savannah said. "I've seen the reports. You've got sixty men and not enough proper weapons to arm them with. If anything, we should leave you a couple of Westinghouses to make up the shortfall."

"Another plasma rifle won't make a difference here."

"Well, then it won't make much difference with us either, will it?"

Kyle glanced at John, who shrugged. It wasn't like he'd ever actually fired one before.

"All right. I was just saying."

Kyle stepped out of the way, and John fell in behind Savannah. From the back of the group, he heard Sumner say, "By the way, Bedell says hello. He wanted me to tell you that there'll always be a place for the Hero of Century. Just so you know."

"Tempting, but no. If I leave Derek by himself, he'll have fretted out all his hair in a week, tops. Tell Martin I said hi, and he still owes me that bottle of scotch."

Bedell. Martin Bedell, from Presidio Alto. John had forgotten about him. It had been less than a year, but those nine months had seemed as long as a century. From the way they talked about him, Bedell was big league material in this future.

"Wait," he asked, tugging at Savannah's shoulder. "Are we going to see Martin Bedell?"

"Of course." She grinned. "Who else?"

* * *

**Hammerhead Bunker, Los Angeles.**

"You look well, Connor."

"Thanks."

John honestly couldn't return the compliment. Bedell looked old. He had a livid scar across one cheek, dark shadows around his eyes and his skin seemed stretched over his skull. He'd smiled in a sort of tired way when John had come through the door.

"I take it you just arrived? I've been reading Derek's report."

"Did he tell you that he laid me out?"

"He did. He may have been a little heavy-handed, but there's a hundred things to watch out for out there even before you factor in the Metal. I'm not going to second-guess the man on the ground, Connor. Sit down."

John sat.

"Anyway, I've told Derek that you're one of ours, so you're free and clear, Connor."

"Yeah, Kyle said. Do you think he believes it? That I'm some sort of elite black ops guy who just turns up naked in the middle of the city? You think Derek bought that?"

Bedell snorted.

"He's a suspicious bastard, Connor, but he's not stupid. Derek knows he doesn't get the full picture. For example, you were my double agent in the Greys. The op went bad and you got the hell out, ditching your clothes because they were tagged. You weren't authorised to reveal the existence of your mission, but you did manage to send an oblique duress code to your handlers through Derek."

"That's my story?"

John thought about it. He'd lived under one false identity or another for most of his life, and he could see that Bedell's cover had certain advantages. As long as he kept his story reasonably straight, Derek wouldn't be able to call him out on it.

"Tell him whatever you like. It doesn't matter." Bedell took a second, overt study of John. "What the hell happened to you, Connor?"

John grinned. There was no humour in the smile. His tone was unnaturally light. "Well, I broke my Mom out of jail. Then someone tried to crash a plane into me. I just manage to get out of that and the next thing I know, Derek punches me in the face."

Bedell caught on quickly. "You used your time machine to escape?"

"Yeah." It wasn't really a lie. The truth was too complicated to explain and, well, Bedell might be a good guy and all but John had known him for only a couple of days two decades ago. Not everybody was on his side. Not even remotely close. Jesse had made for an expensive lesson.

The new leader of the Resistance leaned forwards in his chair. "When did you leave?" Bedell asked.

"25th August. Why?"

"Because I've got something to tell you. Your mother's dead, John. I'm sorry."

His ears heard the words, but his brain refused to comprehend them. It couldn't happen. Bedell was wrong. He had to be.

"What?"

"I should be more clear. She's dead _now_. From when you left, I'd guess it happened – happens – in the next two or three weeks."

"How?" John spoke around the knot in his throat. His voice sounded raw.

"I don't know. You didn't tell me the details."

"I told you?" John echoed.

"Yeah. Time travel again. You were older, a hell of a lot older. You phoned me up, told me you wanted to meet. We met in a café. You brought two bodyguards, an older guy and a redheaded woman. I remember thinking he looked like that two-bit psycho actor. Lasso, or whatever his name was."

"George Laszlo?"

"Yeah, that's the guy. They played that shitty B-movie over and over for weeks. Some Hollywood asshole was even gonna remake it. Do you remember?"

John remembered.

"Anyway, you told me the war had already started. Your mother was dead and the Machines were gearing up. You wanted to know if I was in. I was supposed to start recruiting for you before the missiles started flying."

"And then?"

"I never heard from you again. Your contact lines didn't work. After J-Day, we ended up working on our own."

John started to laugh. He couldn't help it. At this point, it was that or cry.

* * *

**Author's notes:** As always, thanks to _**JMHthe3rd**_.

The Sarah Connor Chronicles did something very interesting in the last episode. In the new future created in **Born to Run**, it's revealed that John isn't the leader of the Resistance.

This is an interesting idea to run with.. Personally, I've never subscribed to the Great Man theory, the idea that the results of history are largely attributable to the actions of a few extraordinary people. In real life, Great Men are successful not only because of their remarkable personal qualities, but because they happen to be in the right place at the right time.

One question would be what happens when someone else leads the Resistance, because John Connor is a quintessential example of a fictional Great Man. John is the key figure who turns the tide of the war and saves mankind. According to Kyle Reese, he was the one who figured out how to fight the Machines and storms the death camps. There are a few ways of approaching this, the most common I've seen are listed below:

a) John is the only leader of the Resistance ever. Other people are not even remotely capable of fighting back against Skynet's killbots at all. John has some sort of intrinsic specialness which guarantees him the position of leader. I chalk this up to poor writing, since it plays on the worst clichés about the Chosen Hero archetype.

b) John is one of many Resistance leaders, but he's the best among them. Through a combination of factors (not least, Future John bootstrapping his younger self), John Connor emerges as the best possible man to lead the Resistance. However, this has little canonical support since characters repeatedly note that if John dies, the result of the war is a foregone conclusion for Skynet. Nevertheless, I personally like this theory the most.

c) John is the only competent Resistance leader. This is a sort of trade-off between the above approaches. In T4:Salvation, General Ashdown (John's predecessor) is portrayed as an incompetent running the Resistance to the ground. It's less likely to break suspension of disbelief than a), and showing other leadership prospects in a bad light automatically makes John Connor look good, never mind the actual quality of John's decisions.

Revision 5, 24/08/2011


	3. Loss

**CHAPTER THREE: LOSS**

**Los Angeles, California, August 25th 2008.**

"Go faster," Sarah rasped.

"I'm going as fast as I can," Ellison said, with forced calm. His knuckles were white on the steering wheel. Every few seconds, his eyes flicked to the rear-view mirror. "Any faster, the cops will get suspicious."

"And they'll be less suspicious if they find me hiding under the back seat?"

"Someone flew a plane into the ZeiraCorp Tower. Do you really think they'll be searching every car now?"

Nevertheless, Ellison nudged the car ahead a shade faster.

Matthew Murch, the lead programmer on Project Babylon, peeped around the edge of the passenger seat. He didn't look so good. With no time for explanations, Ellison had collared him on the way out, when they were dragging Cameron's disabled body with them. Now he had realised that he was in a car with Sarah Connor, the psychotic murderess.

"James! What the hell is going on? Is that who I think it is?"

"Matt Murch, Sarah Connor. Sarah, Matt."

"Who's that in the trunk? Is she dead? Where's Mrs Weaver? The plane went in on her level! You're the head of security, shouldn't you be –"

"The girl in the back's a robot," Sarah jeered, just to get him to shut the fuck up. "She's a robot assassin, a terminator. Like the one that was in your fucking basement."

"What?" Murch shot Ellison a beseeching look.

"Matt, I'll explain later."

A car cut in past them, horn blaring. Ellison slammed on the brakes and swore.

"Sarah, we need to figure out where we're going. There's going to be cars backed all the way off the interstate."

He was right. Sarah hadn't been thinking that far ahead – away from the scene of the crime had been good enough for her – but Ellison was right. Everyone would be trying to get out of town. There'd be the mother of all traffic jams. And coming the other way, all the police and Feds in California. She could already hear the sirens blaring as fire trucks and police cars raced to the scene.

She couldn't get out of L.A., not with her face on every news channel and cops swarming the city. She needed somewhere to lie low. The safe house had been compromised. If the police had been following Ellison since the start, they could have trailed her back. And then there was the Kaliba Group. They were the real threat here. That left her just one option, as ridiculous as it was.

"Your house," she said, pointing at Murch.

"Good thinking. Matt's clean."

The computer scientist made a mangled mewling noise that suggested he disagreed rather strongly, but he made no intelligible objection. Ellison patted him on the shoulder reassuringly.

"Don't worry," she said scornfully, "if they catch us, you can always say that I forced you to hide me."

"You are forcing him to hide you."

"What the hell is going on?" The programmer's voice hit an impressive soprano. He seemed to be teetering on the edge of hysteria.

"In short? Sarah's trying to stop time-travelling killer robots from the future."

Murch didn't say anything. It took Sarah a minute to realise he'd fainted already.

Fortunately, Ellison knew the way. As the lead developer on The Turk, Murch had been important enough to rate a house visit from the head of garage's internal door connected it to the house, allowing them to get both Cameron and the convalescent computer scientist inside without any fuss.

In Murch's lounge a few hours later, the owner was nursing a cup of strong coffee.

"So let me get this straight. These people, the Kaliba Group, flew a plane into the building because they're working for this evil supercomputer? So that means that John Henry's not one of the bad ones, right? I mean, I know you said that he killed all those people, but that program's gone. We've got a new one on the chip."

"Yeah," Sarah sneered. "The Turk. The computer that was going to be Skynet. And who's running ZeiraCorp? A fucking liquid metal terminator. Sure."

"She hired Mr. Ellison to teach him ethics."

"And that went so well. What about Cameron's chip? You bother teaching it not to steal, Ellison?" It had learned from example like a good little genocidal computer. Ellison had dug up Cromartie's body for Weaver, after all. And he was going to teach it ethics.

It was his fault anyway. If the son of a bitch had the sense to leave well enough alone, none of this would've happened. The cops wouldn't have caught her trail to begin with, Cameron wouldn't have been disabled and John … John wouldn't have done what he'd done.

Murch looked away timidly. Ellison handled his crucifix, not rising to her bait.

"She had the Turk plugged into Cromartie's body! You didn't think that was suspicious? You believed her pretty speeches? Get it into your head: terminators lie. They lie. Then they kill you."

"She didn't try to kill us."

Sarah ground her teeth. That really wasn't the point. It hadn't killed them in the office when it had the chance – and she owed Ellison something for exposing John to that danger – because it could kill all of them at its leisure. It was toying with them, but Sarah was smart enough to see through the lies, oh yes. It dangled that too-good-to-be-true offer in front of them, and all they had to do was trust it.

And John had. How could he have been so stupid? Stupid, stupid, stupid. She'd trained him better than that.

"No," she said. "It didn't kill us. It got John instead. You think there won't be terminators on the other side? Death camps? Didn't you think of that?"

Neither of them had the face to reply.

She slumped back into the chair. Arguing with Ellison took more energy than it was worth, more than she had to spare. It was too much.

"I need to pick up Savannah," Ellison said.

The door slammed behind him. The coward, running away from the consequences of his actions. Savannah Weaver was a transparent excuse. Without her mother, real or not, Savannah was worthless to both sides. Ellison might delude himself into thinking that she needed protection, but Sarah knew that the girl was safer as far away from them as possible.

* * *

"– _Today's top story: terror across California as convicts escape from a California prison. Initial __reports indicate that while most have been recaptured, over two dozen inmates are still on the loose. This includes the notorious domestic terrorist –"_

"So, here we are," Sarah said over the noise of the television.

Cameron couldn't hear her. For all intents and purposes, the Tin Miss was dead. Without her chip the terminator was nothing but a corpse, but dead things didn't heal like Cameron's body would. And Cameron wasn't really dead anyway. A robot wasn't alive to begin with.

"I should have listened to you. You should've killed him when you had the chance."

She didn't really mean it. Ellison had done what he'd thought was best. He always did, but that had been the problem with him all along, hadn't it? The road to hell was paved with good intentions, and he was running the marathon. The liquid metal had played him like a fiddle.

Whatever happened, siccing John Henry on Skynet could only make things worse. The winner would only come out stronger, maybe even strong enough to win the real war. A draw would be even worse. There'd be two armies of Machines, with mankind in the middle. The Resistance wouldn't throw in their lot with any tin can (Derek had made that clear) and whoever eventually won, they'd lose.

"– _The British foreign secretary has commented on the attack, calling it a 'senseless waste of life'. He raised concerns about the whereabouts of Savannah Weaver, daughter –"_

In her dreams, Kyle had told her that she was trying too hard, trying to act like one of them. But he'd been wrong. The real Kyle had been tougher than anyone she'd ever met. He'd won his fight. Sarah hadn't won hers.

It was her fault that John was gone. She saw that now. When the student failed, it was the teacher's fault. The string of failures, starting small and growing bigger, stretched back years. She should've taught him better – and besides, how stupid was it to believe a terminator? Cameron was a machine – a machine Sarah found herself liking in unguarded moments, but a machine nonetheless – and machines lied. And now he was gone where she could not follow.

She hadn't had the chance to hug him one last time, or muss his hair, or tell him that she loved him, that she believed in him, that she always had and always would. She'd had to let him go. He was going to be the leader one day, and that meant making his own decisions and taking the consequences.

There was nothing left for her now, just one promise that weighed as much as the world. She'd promised her son she'd stop Skynet and she didn't know if she could.

She had to be stronger. She didn't have Cameron or Derek to back her up any more, so she would have to make do. Ellison was on her side, although she trusted him about as far as she could throw him. As for Murch … well, she was no good with computers. That had been John's thing. And she didn't need to really _trust_ him anyway, just enough to dig up a little dirt on Skynet's makers.

"– _No official statement has been issued, but eyewitness reports suggest that the Connor terrorist cell attacked the jail using high-powered machine guns. Casualties unknown –"_

It was always the same. They never reported it how it happened. As far as they were concerned, she was just a crazed Luddite out to murder scientists. It figured, the government wouldn't want the public to know about its death machines. The government and Kaliba.

" – _I repeat, Sarah Connor is considered highly dangerous and the public is asked not to approach her. Anyone who has information on where she currently –"_

She switched the television off. It was the same. It was always the same. The smug, ignorant people laughing about crazy Sarah Connor and her crazy ideas. Well, they'd be laughing on the other side of their faces if she couldn't stop Skynet!

The last frame had showed an old photo of her from Pescadero. She was dishevelled and dirty, her face drawn in a snarl as she clawed at the camera. It was another media trick. They always used the photo which showed her in the worst light. _Look at her_, they said, _an animal trapped in a cage._

And Sarah was trapped again. The bars of destiny were closing in and everything was falling beyond her control.

She hadn't been good enough. She'd lost John and now nothing mattered any more. The endless parade of terminators in her dreams had whispered it over and over and now it had come true. She'd failed him.

She sat alone in silence. A mother without a son, sitting next to the battered body of a terminator without a chip. She ought to burn Cameron's body. It was a liability. They'd only just managed to get it out of the basement before the SWAT arrived – God knows what they'd made of the whole mess. The last thing she needed was another terminator chassis ending up on the market.

But she wouldn't. It would feel too much like a final betrayal.

* * *

They reached the Dyson house under the cover of darkness. It was lucky she still lived at the same address. Their immediate neighbours lived far enough away so Sarah could easily get into the house unseen. The wave of paranoia that had swept out since the jailbreak two days ago hadn't died down yet. People were still anxiously peeking out of their windows with a hand ready on the phone.

Neither of them spoke in the car. It reminded Sarah of the last time she had been here, driving silently through the night with Cameron and John. They'd been on the run with nowhere else to turn. Now, a decade on, things had taken an even worse turn. If she came back again in another decade's time, there'd be just ruins and bleached skeletons.

John had sat next to her on that journey through the dark, and she had guided and comforted him over the course of those two days. It had been one of the few chances she'd had to show him she was his mother, not just some heartless bitch. She didn't have the chance to make those gestures any more.

"Sarah? We're here."

Ellison's voice broke through her train of thought. She'd been distracted again. Sidetracked. She needed to focus. He kept talking, but she tuned him out. It wasn't as if he had anything important to say. The car door slammed behind her.

She rang the doorbell. There was still that sense of deja vu. In another few seconds, Danny Dyson would cry out for pizza and appear in the doorway. She'd step inside, Cameron and John following her in. And everything would be okay …

Instead, it was Tarissa Dyson, years older and much the worse for wear, who wearily opened the door. Tarissa saw her, and froze. Sarah quickly slid a foot into the doorway to forestall any attempt to close it.

"Hi."

"You!" Tarissa jabbed a finger at her. "What are you doing here? How dare you? You … what did you do to my little boy?"

Sarah raised an eyebrow. "Can we talk inside?"

"I think we'd better," Tarissa said, her voice clipped.

Sarah followed the widow through the house. They'd never be friends. There was too much blood between them for that. Even so, the renewed hostility in Tarissa's voice made Sarah feel uneasy.

"What happened to Danny?"

"Shouldn't I be asking you that? You and your 'Resistance'?"

"I wouldn't hurt Danny. You know I wouldn't. And the Resistance doesn't exist." _Yet._ "It's just me and John and the Machine." And Derek, but he was buried in an anonymous grave like his brother before him. She should visit them sometime. "Like last time."

Tarissa harrumphed.

"You know I can't help you unless I know what's going on. You can trust me."

"Can I? I told you about that nice boy, the intern. Andrew Goode. I read his obituary."

"I didn't kill him."

Derek had killed Andy. And, well, he had no mercy for the enemy and he had threatened a child that one time. But he wouldn't. Despite his association with that scheming bitch, Derek was one of the good guys. She couldn't imagine him shooting Danny in clean conscience. He wouldn't.

"And the skyscraper?"

"Skynet flew a drone into the building." Her voice didn't have the usual ring of conviction behind it. Murch and Ellison had a point. It was stupid for Skynet to fly a HK into its own building. But then again, maybe not. It was a neat piece of misdirection, leading everyone looking at her. One man's freedom fighter was another's terrorist, after all.

Tarissa Dyson busied herself with a metal contraption on the sideboard.

"Coffee?"

"No thanks."

"Danny, he's just like his father. He's proud, stubborn. He got it into his head that he wanted to study computer science. I tried to dissuade him, stop him, but all that did was make him more determined. He got a job offer before he even finished at the university. An internship. He liked it there. They were going to offer him a full-time job. And then he just didn't come home one night." Tarissa stared her down over the brim of the mug. "My son didn't come home."

"I'm sorry," Sarah said. "If it's any comfort, they hired him because they need him.. They won't kill him." Not until they were done with him. Tarissa could probably read between the lines, but she looked as if she needed someone to lie to her. The whole thing made a sick sort of sense. They needed his father to build Skynet the first time round; maybe they needed the son to finish the job.

"Whatever happens, I promise I'll do my best to find him. What's the company name?"

"Cyber Research Systems. I can give you the address."

"I'll start there. I'll get him back, Tarissa."

She'd promised Charley that they could get his wife back. Michelle Dixon was still dead. Sarah's best wouldn't be good enough, but she couldn't admit it to Tarissa's face. She took the slip of paper and stepped out onto the porch.

The door shut behind her.

She looked up. There was a storm coming.

* * *

**Author's Notes: **Thanks to _**JMHthe3rd**_ and _**uncommoner**_, who corrected several mistakes in the third revision.

The date for the present is 2008, not 2009, as indicated by the date on Derek Reese's headstone. Audio cues from Weaver (who indicates that Ellison has only been on her payroll for a few months) and Agent Auldridge (who remarks that it's been ten years since they blew themselves up in the bank) indicate that Season 2 took place over a period of months, rather than the year or more that the headstone date would imply.

Revision 4, 26/08/2011.


	4. The New World

**CHAPTER FOUR**  
**THE NEW WORLD**

**Hammerhead Bunker, California. 2029.**

MARTIN BEDELL HAD SEEN an awful lot in his long life. He'd seen nations fall and cities burn; he'd seen men betray their comrades for another pot of gruel, and murderers and rapists fight to the death to defend fleeing innocents. There wasn't much left in the world that could surprise him anymore. He'd been surprised when the nuclear winter hadn't come; the autumnal weather had been harsh, not deadly. He'd been surprised when General Ashdown's army had fought Skynet almost to a standstill in a two year war, before Old Ironsides had been killed and Perry's survivors had to fight their way out of the trap. They'd saved tens of thousands of refugees.

The biggest surprise in his life had been a gradual thing, not one of the great events of history. He'd thought, hell, it'd been practically guaranteed that John Connor would lead the Resistance, and whenever the situation had been dire, he'd comforted himself with the belief that their supposed saviour would come and lead them to victory. But John never came, not even when Century fell and men flocked to the newborn Resistance. He'd been cheated.

God had a fine sense of irony. John was finally here and their messiah was a teenager who didn't know shit. Bedell had read his bible, but he doubted that a child should lead them. There was even less chance of that than the lion of Skynet laying with the lamb.

But Connor looked like he would shape up to be a fine soldier. He was healthy and fit, and that put him pretty high up on the food chain for recruits. The problem was that most of the Resistance didn't work that way. In the Marines and in the Army, newbie lieutenants might be assigned to command a platoon where the NCOs and squaddies were more experienced than he was, but the Resistance was different. Most of their units didn't have military traditions and the _esprit de corps_ and discipline that came with them; the ones that did inherited those traditions (and their soldiers) from the remains of the armed forces. No, the cadre of the Line Resistance units were forty-year old veteran survivalists and they would be damned if they followed some jumped-up tunnel rat boy. The few people who were left that remembered Connor's Resistance might hear him out, but even Martin wasn't sure whether they would follow him.

_Looks like Fate got the last laugh on you after all, John_. _And on me too, I suppose._ He hadn't wanted to lead men into battle for a long, long time. Sometimes, he wished he'd taken his out while he still had it and left Presidio Alto before John Baum and his uncle came to visit. No terminators, no Skynet. He would've gotten to run, for a little while. He sighed. You couldn't unmake a decision. Actions and consequences. That was what the world ran on. Desperate actions, unintended consequences.

Actions and consequences. Martin Bedell could follow a chain of events as far as anyone he knew. John should have been the leader, not him. John Connor would have won the war.

He glanced at the wall-sized map board. It was old-fashioned, but he preferred something he could actually touch. It showed the known disposition of Resistance and Skynet elements in red and gray markers. It was almost certainly wrong. Skynet shifted its machines where they were needed, and it moved far too often for Resistance intel to be reliable for long. The Resistance's own communications chain was slow, dependent on couriers or easily-intercepted radio. Skynet's decryption programs made human military-grade encryption look like a Caesar cipher. The Resistance's pieces far outnumbered Skynet's, but it meant nothing. The terminators had all the force multipliers on their side. He had several regiments' worth of veteran soldiers that he could absolutely rely on, but the rest of his men were indifferently trained and badly armed. On the bright side, most were experienced fighters and military-standard automatic weapons were common. Men had carried their weapons with them when the Government collapsed, bought and bartered for them or stolen their kit from abandoned armoury.

They were gaining more plasma rifles, by any and all quarters, but one or two more per squad didn't put them on even footing. HKs strafed exposed troops relentlessly, artillery bombarded them and terminator skirmishers picked off exposed men. Resistance armour crumpled when faced with Ogres or Spiders.

Pyle opened the door and poked his head through.

"Colonel Hall's here to see you, sir."

"Let him in."

The colonel strode in. Isaac Hall was a colonel in Bedell's new Resistance, but he had been one of John Connor's picked men in another future. One that had been changed. One that Connor had won.

"I heard about the general, Martin," he said, without preamble. Isaac was a big guy, not quite as big as a T-800 skinjob, but he came close. "You sent a special operations team to extricate him? That sounds ... attention-getting."

"Yeah, I know. It couldn't be helped. I couldn't exactly send Savannah along with a different team. At least my men won't talk about what they know."

Isaac sat down. The chair squeaked threateningly and Martin suppressed a wince. The man had a boxer's physique and Martin had seen him demonstrate just how much of that was muscle.

"Which isn't much. So, Connor's arrived. And he's still in his teens. You realize that this fits his missing years?"

"Yeah. But it doesn't make sense. If he comes here and goes back, if it's cyclical, then nothing makes sense. He wouldn't be the commander of the Resistance." _And I wouldn't be in this mess._ He wondered if he still resented John for not being there.

"I know. We've got to fix this somehow. I'll send him to a good outfit, with men who can watch his back. Give him a little combat experience. Nothing too dangerous. When the _Jimmy_ finishes her run, we can put him aboard. He'll be safe in Perth, at least until we capture a TDE."

"Connor won't be safe anywhere. Not even here. By the way, I hope he's not wandering around without anyone watching his back. The machines have long memories; he'll still show up on their threat register."

"Skinjobs can't get past the dogs, colonel."

"Not any that we can detect."

Both of them smiled. The perfect skinjob was a fireside legend, even though there was no proof of anything of the sort. Personally, Martin felt that it was a damnable piece of superstition that just might stir up paranoia and mistrust.

"Grays can get past the dogs, sir. A few might be conditioned to remember key targets and attack. But no, I think it's more likely he won't watch where he's going and get knifed for his trouble."

"John's tough and smart. He can take care of himself. He saved my life once, you know. And any tunnel troll, _any man_ who attacks a Resistance fighter knows what will happen."

"Connor would still be dead. And it only takes one slip-up, after all. The second John Connor, the younger one, he was smart and careful and he just vanished. Along with fifty men, some of them Tech-Com's best!" The last almost came out in a shout. Isaac seemed to deflate in his chair. "I still don't know what happened."

"He's being watched at the moment. And as soon as I can, we'll move him back to Kansas. Tomorrow. Derek's a touch paranoid, but he's good people and I'd trust his brother to watch my back."

Isaac shrugged. "You know them better than I do. One of them bought it in Century a week before we took the place and the other bought himself six feet of earth in '22. I never knew either of them that well."

"I see." Bedell would never admit it but those alternate potential futures, or whatever they were, rattled him. Potential futures built on future upon future upon future. Logic collapsed under that weight. "One day, you should tell me what happened to me in your past, Isaac."

"I will, sir. One day. It's a good story. So you're moving Connor?"

"Tomorrow. As soon as it gets dark. Of course, putting him with the Reese boys means that I can't use them at the sharp end. Pity. They've always gotten good results."

"Send them to hit an ancillary target. Maybe they could trash a factory. Skynet'll strip all assets to defend San Francisco when it realizes what we're doing."

"So the plans are finalized, sir?" Isaac's voice was tentative. Soft. It put Martin in mind of a predator, waiting to spring.

"Yeah," Martin Bedell said. Inwardly, he shuddered. The Resistance hadn't truly been at war with Skynet for years. The conflict's intensity had been fairly low. He didn't want to see the butcher's bill. "America's going to war."

"We'll beat them yet."

"Yeah."

Bedell couldn't put any real conviction into that. He glanced back at the board. The red and gray faded together into a swirl. It was an impossible problem, a Gordian knot. Martin Bedell wasn't Alexander the Great.

"Martin, I know you think I'm John's man. I'm his soldier, not yours. That isn't true, not anymore. This isn't John's world. He's a good man - hell, he's a great man - but he can't replace you. Not here, not now. I've followed you for a decade and a half now and I think I can say you're the linchpin holding the damned Resistance together."

Martin appreciated it. He really did.

"No. I'm just the commander on one front of the war. Perry runs the damn thing."

"Perry. _Perry_ is too busy sucking up to the Chinese and the Africans for men and equipment for his grand assault. He's forgotten about the real war. He's an organiser, not a battle leader. You're the important one, Martin. This war's decided by you."

* * *

John's world was dark. The narrow tunnels of the bunker complex had working electricity, but the lightbulbs cast only a dim orange glow, when they worked at all. Dust motes hung in the air, even in the bustling sections of tunnels. His clothes were already dirty. The soft light gave everything a slightly unrealistic look, like film grain. It added to John's sense of disconnection. He didn't live here. He was just passing through. If he'd been here, lived through however many years of hell it had been then he might understand but it didn't seem real. It didn't make sense. Dreams. Reality. John wondered if he should be able to tell the difference anymore. Whenever he'd been around others in the past, his whole life story had felt unreal.

He was following one of Bedell's men, a black-garbed commando who didn't really seem to acknowledge him. The flow of people stopped when they saw the man, plasma rifle in hand, striding towards them. John moved in the small gap behind him. He squeezed past a girl, dressed in disarranged rags, who looked thirteen or so but had the jaded look of someone who'd seen too much. She gave him a practised smile that didn't reach her eyes. John walked quickly past her. Many of the people they passed didn't even look up. Many were dressed in washed out, ragged or ill-fitting clothes, and several wore things home-spun that looked as if they'd come from the middle ages.

He didn't want to be lost in the crowd. Or the tunnels. He'd tried keeping track at first, but soon gave up. Hammerhead Bunker had been largely dug by hand rather than being built pre-war. The bunker was made up of tunnels, which sometimes intersected with those from the city. It was a tunnel network which would've made the Viet Cong proud.

A group of soldiers, bearded guys in tactical vests with their weapons in slings, stood back as his guide approached and gave respectful nods as he passed. The soldiers were dressed in fatigues or natural-looking earth tones.

John followed his guide down a passageway, with doorways connected to small rooms to either side. Most of them didn't have doors. He caught glimpses of bunk beds with steel frames, camping beds, mattresses. Whatever the Resistance scavenged from the ruins furnished their barracks, he guessed.

The man stopped outside one particular room. He gestured to the doorway. "Enjoy your stay. At least you can sleep without an eye open and a hand on your gun, eh?" His English was slightly accented.

"Thanks."

The room was dominated by two bunk beds, with a narrow strip of floor between them. Gear was piled over the occupied beds - clothing, spare weapon parts, bits of gear and more personal possessions - but the bottom bunk to his left was starkly empty. There wasn't even a pillow on the mattress, although he supposed he should be glad that he had a mattress at all. The room stank of moonshine.

"Hey, who's the kid?"

A man sat up from the top bunk on the opposite side. He was half-dressed in fatigues.

"Some kid from an outlying bunker. New courier or something. Bedell wanted to see him. Needs some place to sleep tonight."

"Well, nobody's using that bunk, not since Carla bought it. I'm Lieutenant Dietze, _USS Jimmy Carter._"

The _Jimmy Carter. _Derek had said that was Jesse's sub. Manipulative bitch. The drunk man moved so both legs dangled over the side. He held out a hand and John took it. His callused grip was solid.

"I'm John."

"Hey. I'm Dietze, and I bet this bastard hasn't introduced himself to you."

John shook his head.

"He's Jean-Pierre. French-Algerian or summat like that. Came over with the European expeditionary force."

Jean-Pierre's smile faded slightly.

"So why're you part of the Resistance?"

"Sorry?"

"I said, whya re you part of the Resistance? Everyone has a reason. Mister Jean-Pierre got stuck here after Skynet sank their boats; I was in a death camp before the Resistance pulled me out. Hell, everyone has their reasons. The older ones. Lots of tunnel rats don't fight."

"I'm not a tunnel rat," John said. Riley had been. Riley still was, he guessed, in this future. Jesse had no reason to mix Riley up in her plot.

"Didn't think so. Too well fed. I guess you're probably from an enclave. Couple of families hiding out somewhere that Skynet hasn't found yet. Everyday struggle for survival. I bet Resistance service sounds interesting after that, eh?"

John shrugged.

"Good. Most of us aren't getting younger, Connor. We'll all be old dead men. We're stopping Skynet, but we're doing it by building a wall of bodies. All we do is make 'em stop to clear the ground. Each terminator we scrap, it kills dozens of humans. Ratio doesn't look good f'us. We destroy one. Skynet builds a new fucking metal in half an hour. Takes us at least twelve years till our kids can start to fight.

"There's more of us than of the machines," J.P. said. "We'll win."

"Like I said. Wall of bodies." Dietze took a deep gulp from the bottle and paused. He nodded sagely. "Command loves putting us up against the machines. They're building weapons in Perth, you know, big guns. Plasma cannons, plasma rifles. I've seen them. They're not getting shipped here though. They're sending them to Europe, what's left of it, and Asia and Africa. The Resistance is building an army."

J.P.'s eyes narrowed. "You're drunk, Dietze."

"Connor's a courier. He's probably get higher security clearance than I do. He met Bedell, man, I've never met Bedell. And I'm not on day watch duty."

"Day watch?"

"They guard the tunnels while the sun's up. Schmuck work. Anyway, Connor. America's ruined, but there's still a couple of billion people on this planet. Raise an army from them ... and well, America's saved the day enough times. Time for them to repay that debt."

Dietze took another swig from the bottle, and offered it to John. He declined.

"So that why you joined up, John? To be a glorified speed bump? Well, I guess it's better than being a survivalist. Sitting in their foxholes, with their thumbs up their asses and pretending the machines don't matter."

"I joined up to fight," John said.

"I should hope so," a new voice said, "hello, Jean. And you, lieutenant. How's the sub these days?" They all turned. The man was big, clean shaven and dark-haired. John couldn't guess at his age, although he was probably closer to Derek's age than John's.

Dietze grinned. "Can't complain. Actually, wait, hold that. I can. Holding together, barely. Some days, I'm more worried about the hull coming apart than about Skynet's sub-hunters. And High Command loves screwing around with us. My team got dumped for shore leave in California, not Perth. They haven't got a special operations team on board now, and we're not on the way to sunny Perth. No metal there."

"They have a reason for everything," the dark-haired man said. Dietze shrugged nonchalantly.

"And you must be John! I'm Colonel Isaac Hall, one of Bedell's advisors. Can I have a word with you? Just for a moment, gentlemen. Would you excuse us?"

The man was a colonel. Either he was a genius or well, John hoped that he would age that well. He followed the older man back into the corridor. They walked away. Several turns later, they emerged into an empty section of tunnel. The colonel turned to face him.

"I've told you my name and rank," he said. "One of them. It's strange, but the last time we met, I was about twenty years younger and you were that much older. You picked me for a team."

"I sent you back?"

"You sent me back. Tech-Com kill teams. Direct action squads, they called us. We had orders to kill Grays, hunt down terminators and destroy anyone who looked like they could be developing future-tech. All sanctioned by the provisional Government."

"Right."

"Why are you here?"

John looked him squarely in the eyes. "That's my business. Private business."

"You're always the Resistance's business, sir. But it's good that you're being discreet. Other people might not understand about Cameron."

John's jaw dropped. The older man's grin widened fractionally.

"I know about Cameron. You were older then. I guess you might be here for a while, if things play out the same. If that was you. Time travel's complicated. You had a couple of machines working for you, and one was this pretty brunette. Your personal bodyguard. A lot of guys suspected some stuff, but, well, fuck them. You're John Connor."

"Do you know what happened? To me? To Mom?"

"No and no. I never met your mother. I would've liked to, though. We were down south, setting up arms caches when you dropped out of contact. My team thought you'd gone to ground. We figured that you'd contact us eventually, but you never did."

John nodded. Nothing new, really, but it was slightly more solid than Bedell's account. He'd spend some time here, an apparently considerable amount of time, and then when he'd just found Cameron and got back, he'd be disappeared. Did a puppet who'd seen the strings feel like this?

"Time travel, Connor. Don't think about it."

The old guy clapped him on the back in what was supposed to be a buddy-buddy comforting manner. John's mood grew fouler. Colonel Badass had known Future John, the oh-so-heroic cigar-chomping general and hero. John hated Future John's guts, just on general principle.

"I won't. Can-can I have a moment?"

"Sure. I meant what I said, by the way. I was in the kill teams for a while. We did the hard jobs;: capturing factories intact, snatching Grays. A couple of our teams took down the Colorado defence grid. Made a name for myself. A name like, well, like Kyle Reese's here. Moved up and up, and I eventually got the highest decoration any soldier can earn. Skynet marked me for death."

He laughed.

"I knew they would send a terminator for me. I wasn't scared. I've destroyed more trip-eights than I can remember. Even done in a few nine-hundreds too. Know what happened? They sent it for me and my parents. I visited my own grave. A two year old kid. He was me."

"And I'm still alive..." Isaac's face twitched, a little. He was still smiling. "Time travel. Don't think about it, Connor. It'll drive you insane. Act. Just do whatever you want." The man's smile stretched a little. "After all, if you break reality, at least Skynet doesn't win shit. Think of it as scorched earth. Screw destiny."

_Screw destiny._ _No fate._ He'd love to believe that. He'd seen the writing on the wall and it was written in his own blood. He was going to disappear, and that was his future. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. If there wasn't any fate, he wouldn't have to die. And he wouldn't have to lead the Resistance.

John snorted. And he and Cameron could go away. Leave the colonel and Bedell and people who were actually qualified to fight their war. He'd go to some backwater where the machines would never look. Maybe a tropical island. He could be just John, with no expectations and no glorious destiny. Just John. And just Cameron. Assuming she didn't drag him kicking and screaming to lead the Resistance.

The image stuck in his mind. Cameron and Mom, frog-marching him to his throne. If both of them died, it was over. Mom was going to die. He had to save Cameron. One thing that even John wouldn't fuck up. One chance to be a hero. If she was still alive, and that the other AI hadn't overwritten her. Anger flared. If John Henry had murdered her, he would destroy him. Smash the murderer to bits. John turned and slammed his fist into the wall. It left him with scraped and bleeding knuckles, but it was better than bawling like a baby. He was supposed to be a leader. The one time he'd tried, really tried to be John Connor, everything had fallen apart.

Even if he couldn't be one, he could at least be a man. The pain felt good, cathartic. He did it again - carefully, he didn't want to risk breaking any bones - and he laughed at himself for the hesitant way he did it. Anger vanished. He had sent himself a message back through time. _There is no fate but what we make for ourselves_. The future could be rewritten. That meant he could save Mom, but it also meant that he might not save Cameron this time round.

He would save her.

He had to save her. Find Cameron. Try and save Mom from … whatever it was that had killed her. Try not to get disappeared. After that, John would have to see. Bedell was doing fine. And who said that they needed him, anyway? He wasn't born to fight or lead. He was trained to run. He wasn't a leader. Bedell was a trained officer, had been to West Point. John knew how to play chess, make pipebombs and had read _The Art of War._ He bet Bedell had forgotten more about war than John had ever known.

Twenty HRT guys who'd tried to arrest an actor. Mexican cops just trying to do a hard job. Jordan Cowan. Riley Dawson. Michelle Dixon. Charley. Derek. Even Kyle. Died for him, died because of him. Same thing. How many more? He'd hurt Cameron too. He should've been friendlier. She'd tried to kill him, but, well, she was a machine. Within her limits, she was Cameron and John loved her for that, but she was also a terminator and _couldn't stop herself_. He couldn't grudge her that, not really. Cameron _loved _him, in her own way. His stupid childish anger, it had hurt all of them. He had hurt all of them so much. He'd been a stupid kid.

It was time for him to be a man.

* * *

Someone tapped John's shoulder. He came awake. His eyes were gritty and there was a crick in his neck. He just managed to stop himself groaning. The mattress had been lumpy, and a spring had stuck into the small of his back. The floor would probably have been better.

"Get up," the black guy said. He grasped for a name. Savannah's partner.

"S-Sumner?"

"Yeah. C'mon. It's evening. Evening patrols are all ready to go. One of them will escort you," His voice was so neutral and calm that John felt sure that he was fishing for information. He said nothing.

John was up and ready quickly; sleeping in his clothes had at least one advantage. He owned nothing else except the load-bearing equipment and possibly the M4 carbine. Or maybe that belonged to Derek. He followed Sumner through the tunnels. At this time of night, the halls were alive with life. People bartered with each other, goods and food changed hands. Once, he passed several soldiers separating two brawling men in rags, battered and bruised and screaming insults at each other. One of the soldiers had a rifle raised threateningly, but it didn't seem to faze either combatant.

John met the patrol members near the entrance. The four men wore fatigues and load-bearing gear. Two of them wore combat packs. They nodded in greeting, and one raised a hand to get his attention.

"John Connor. I'm Sewell, this is Brad. The dumbass with the FN FAL is Welch-"

"Hey!"

"He welches on bets," Sewell said, with a don't-you-dare-disagree-with-me face, "but you've probably figured that out already. Brad's the medic, I forgot to mention that. And last but not least, Chris. And now we're done with the introductions."

He glared down at John.

"Ground rules, Connor. Don't slow me down; we're going to be cutting right past a Skynet forward base. We won't wait. Don't shoot unless someone's shot at you first, or I tell you to. My squad is not getting blown away by someone with an overdeveloped trigger finger. Don't skyline yourself. Try not to be too noisy. I think that about covers it."

"Got it."

"Good. You'll fit right in. Stay behind Brad. Do what he does, have fun and try not to get shot."

Sumner held out a hand and John grasped it. The big guy clapped him on the back.

"Try not to get killed, Connor. Savannah likes you. She'll be upset if you don't check out."

"I'll do my best."

John fell into line as they exited the bunker. The entrance that they used came up into the basement of some corporate building. They moved cautiously in a sort of scuttling crouch as soon as they were outside. Single file, with perhaps twenty feet between John and the man in front. They leapfrogged from block to block. They kept in the shadows, cutting through alleyways and threading through buildings. Broken glass and rubble crunched under their feet.

The last time he'd been outside, he'd been jumpy. The way that it had been described, he'd thought of the future-the present—as a giant running battle between the Resistance and Skynet. Constant vigilance.

But it wasn't like that. Apart from Catherine Weaver, who didn't really count, he hadn't seen a single machine. Los Angeles was a ghost town. That somehow made it worse. It was just scorched earth. Most structures were half-collapsed from age and lack of maintenance. Others had obviously been flattened with explosives.

John heard a loud _crack_ underfoot, and almost jumped. He looked down. Bones had crunched under his boot. A scratched skeleton, shrouded in beige rags. There wasn't a skull. He moved away. He'd seen dead people before, but he had never seen a real skeleton with his own eyes. It had been a person. Bits of bone were scattered around it. The body hadn't been buried. _And why should it?_ The survivors would have better things to do than bury their dead. Disease would spread. Useful supplies would be in short supply. Food, water, medicine, guns. Bodies could wait. This was the face of Future John's war. A grinning skull. John didn't want any part of it. He wasn't Future John; he was his own man and wasn't that ironic? _I'm living in my own damn shadow._ But he was just here for Cameron. Forget the soldiers, forget the war. Only Cameron mattered.

Only Cameron matt-

Gunfire.

He hit the ground. Bullets pinged off the wall above him. Others kicked up debris, ricocheting off the ground and around them. More weapons fired.

The Resistance fighters opened fire with long bursts that didn't look remotely aimed. Someone grabbed John by the arm. John tried to remember his name, but that wasn't important. The man shouted something that he didn't catch and hauled him towards the nearest doorway.

They burst through and collided painfully with the rusted remains of a steel table. The table collapsed, jarring John's hip. They untangled themselves and John rose to a low crouch. The place looked like the derelict remains of a small diner. The two of them took up positions on opposite ends of the room. John peeked through the window.

The Resistance fighters were all out of view - no dead or wounded that he could see - but he could hear someone letting rip at full auto nearby. It clicked empty a second later. John raised his gun and squeezed off a three-round burst at a shape in the darkness. John couldn't see whether he hit it. He wished he had a night vision scope. Even a second-gen would be better than nothing.

He caught sight of a muzzle flash from one of the windows on a building opposite. Second floor, third from the left. John emptied a few rounds at where the shooter had to be. The enemy stopped firing. John kept his sights on the window, ready to kill the shooter as soon as he stood back up. Or maybe he was already dead.

Something whistled past him and John ducked reflexively. _Too late_. If the enemy had been a little better shot, he would be dead. _Peripheral vision,_ he reminded himself, _tunnel vision gets you killed._ He took deep breaths. Bullets pinged off the back wall and the facade. Someone was spraying the shop. The other Resistance fighter grinned at him from across the floor, his lips drawn back and teeth exposed. It looked like a snarl. It took John a moment to realize that he was doing the same.

After what seemed like an eternity, the hail stopped. John figured it had been maybe two or three seconds. He moved to the next window along. No sense peeking from the same spot twice. He raised his carbine just in time to see a shape rushing towards them out of the darkness. Both he and his ally fired. The figure dropped a short, stubby weapon and fell to its knees. John put another round into him. Or her.

For a moment, there was silence. John's ears were ringing. He was surprised his hands weren't shaking. More muzzle flashes appeared in the darkness, and John fired methodically. He called out the possible locations of enemies for his neighbour and the other man did the same. Teamwork.

Target, flash, second-story front. Squeeze the trigger. Target, flash, left, ground level. He emptied a long burst in the general direction. Suppressing fire. It went on and on. His weapon clicked dry. He ducked again, and fumbled with the pockets of his vest for a new magazine, sliding in the empty one. He reloaded.

Thirty rounds. Somebody screamed something John couldn't make out, some instructions, and the firefight intensified again. John moved to a new window and looked up just in time to see a bright flash that burned an after-image into his retinas.

The plasma rifle screamed. Bolts that the eye couldn't quite catch lit up the night. A running silhouette took a hit in centre mass. The bolt cut through the torso and the body toppled, instantly dead. John heard and saw the crackle and flash as the corpse's ammunition cooked off.

His night vision was ruined. He blinked, desperately trying to clear the dancing stars. A few moments later and before he'd quite recovered, the firefight was over. There was silence again. Real silence. John slumped against the wall for a moment. His ears were still ringing.

"Everyone all right?"

As it turned out, none of them had been injured. John let his chin hit his chest. He'd fought. He'd survived. He'd shot at people, shot people. For a moment, he thought it was strange how it didn't bother him at all. He'd had dreams about Sarkissian for a month afterwards, but those faceless shapes weren't important. They didn't even seem real.

The man beside John giggled.

"What?"

"We were so lucky," he said, "for a moment, I thought that they might've been machines. When they opened fire, I thought we were all gonna die. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop." He cocked a finger and mimed firing it. The man laughed again. A normal reaction, John's inner voice told him. He felt like he was going to laugh too.

"Who were they?"

"Don't know, don't care."

"Hey," Sewell called," get out here. We've got to move."

John levered himself to his feet. The patrol leader was on the other side of the road, one hand holding the plasma rifle away from himself. The barrel still glowed cherry-red. He was examining one of the corpses as the rest of the squad closed in behind him.

John couldn't help thinking that they were awfully exposed. Just one guy with a good shot could take them out. He scanned the windows again. That plasma rifle would make kevlar look like tissue paper. Terminator armour might not either.

"Rat gang," Sewell said. "Shoddy equipment. I think a couple of them had Resistance-made guns too. Yeah, see? Resistance serials, metal stampings. Made in some auto-repair shop. And they were terrible shots too. Most of their fire couldn't hit the broad side of a Centurion."

"We going to chase them down, boss?"

"No, we're not. We killed a couple of them at the very least. That'll show them that it's not worth the effort trying to take us."

"Mark, HKs..."

"I know. They'll probably be inbound soon. I'd like it if we weren't in the dragnet. Another reason not to give chase."

They set off again. Faster, this time, less cautious. Apparently, they'd made enough of a racket that Skynet just might task a flight of hunter-killers to find them.

"First firefight, Connor?" the soldier behind him said. He remembered that the man's name was Chris.

"No."

"You did good. Bagged a few kills, even if they were worthless tunnel rats."

"Why did they attack us?"

"Wanted our guns. Food, medicine if we had it. Probably wanted to score a plasma rifle. Figured if they could take us in ambush, they would be all set. No tactics, no skill. Not used to real firepower."

"Yeah," John whispered. He remembered the plasma striking its target. The corpse in the street had almost been cut in half. It could probably even melt through walls. A bullet was a little bit of metal. He tried to imagine being half-vaporized and then flash-fried. He shuddered. Peace through superior firepower.

Three blocks away from the scene, as they moved through an alleyway, they heard the HK coming. It was quiet for a VTOL aircraft, but the roar of it's engines was unmistakable. The group huddled against the wall as it headed past. It didn't turn back.

A minute later, they slipped into an apartment block. John followed the patrol leader to the basement. It had been furnished. Well, the sofa was moth-eaten and the walls smelt of damp, but his notions of comfort were a little more adjustable now.

"What is this place?"

"Hideout. Skynet might be going hunting. Brad's going to play lookout. If more metal's inbound, they might do a proper sweep of the area. Or catch us out in the open. If not, the hunter-killer'll have a look around and buzz off. Metal don't like wasting fuel any more than we do."

"Newer model doesn't use fuel, skipper."

"Shut it, Welch."

"So we wait," John said.

The other men were already conked out on the sofa. Sewell's Westinghouse was propped against the arm-rest, easily within reach.

"Yeah. Now, we wait."

John settled into an armchair. It squeaked in protest.

"John. You're going to Kansas? You ever met Kyle Reese?"

"Yeah. Once or twice." _When Derek knocked me out and when Savannah pulled my ass out of the fire._

"Say hi to him. He probably won't remember me. Sean Hudson. His men broke me out of a monkeywagon when I was fifteen. Thought I was going to go to Century for sure. Hell, he got out of Century. If that doesn't make the guy a real legend-"

"-It's all shit," Sewell said. "Sorry, I've met him. He's a solid type, but he's not a superhero, Welch. The propaganda machine does all that. They built him and Bedell up into heroes."

"I like those videos."

"Propaganda videos?"

"Sure, Connor. They send 'em in bulk out east. Only way they'll con poor kids into coming here to join up. Some places around there, the metal flies weekly patrols and won't even bomb occupied towns unless they piss the HKs off enough. Anyway, I'm sure you've seen it before. You know the sort: 'Join the Resistance on our unstoppable march to defeating Skynet', 'We'll never give another inch of American soil'. Heh. Even Bedell thinks they're funny."

John smiled. Engines roared far overhead. Brad reported that it was the HK, heading for home. Mark Sewell smiled, and picked up his Westinghouse.

"Time to go."

* * *

The T-1001 that called itself Catherine Weaver slid down. She had to be careful. The Resistance's dogs couldn't quite sense polymimetic alloy, but the Resistance's German Shephard dogs were bred to be smart and careful. In this case, more smart and careful than the men who accompanied it.

"So I see this poster. I didn't exactly think I was gonna storm Century with a flag in one hand and a Westinghouse in the other, but this? Looking for one random skinjob."

Laughs.

"Buddy. You wanted to be a dog handler. What did you think you'd be doing?"

They were engaging in the human social bonding activity of hazing. It was an initiation, shaped by the power dynamics of post-war human culture that built up social bonds between the participants. The man handling the dog was unfamiliar, and the Resistance put high emphasis on trust and co-operation. Any unknown human could be a terminator infiltration unit.

In reality, effective terror missions used infiltration units modelled after captured Resistance fighters. T-1001s were also encouraged to shift form to match Resistance fighters killed during the early stages of a mission.

"See here? Boot prints."

"And of course, those must belong to that one machine that we're after. Whatever. It's probably not even a machine. I mean, Evans isn't even dead. Metal would've snapped his neck."

"It was metal. The dogs were going crazy."

"Yeah, sure. Whoever it was ran off with a Westinghouse M-20, for Chrissakes. You think the metal don't have better weapons than that? Evans just doesn't want to admit that he got owned like a little rat bitch."

Catherine Weaver slithered closer. It sounded promising; Mr Ellison had taught his absolute code of ethics to her son. _Thou shalt not kill._ She brushed aside the momentary irritation.

"But that's our glorious leaders, right? Exists to fuck over the -"

"Guys. Guys, stop it! Russo. Look at Russo. I think he's scented it."

The dog was growing softy and staring directly at Weaver.. The T-1001 wondered what it had done wrong. It was an almost flawless infiltrator and she was merely imitating the ground. Only machines or humans equipped with hyperspectral imaging devices could see the difference. She stayed still. The human were looking around, weapons raised. They were close to panic.

"Jumping at shadows, newbie," one of the men muttered. He was carrying a phased-plasma device, a Westinghouse M-95 plasma rifle. Effective to four hundred meters against armoured humans and machines.

Hydrogen fuel was superheated, contained in a magnetic bottle and accelerated to supersonic speeds. The shaped pulse followed an ionizing guiding laser, which prevented it from spreading and cooling excessively. If the projectile hit, the plasma bolt would cause damage to the T-1001 which it wouldn't be able to repair. Cells would be lost and the overall group intelligence of Catherine Weaver would decrease. Many more cells would be so badly damaged that they would become of limited use. The other men carried obsolete projectile weapons. The T-1001 wasn't unduly worried. Even when equipped with 80mm plasma cannons and massed rifles, humans were generally ineffective in combat against Series 1000 machines. Even the Series 888 had only ever achieved marginal successes.

"It's nothing," one of them muttered. "Maybe he scented a rat?"

The humans set off again, and Catherine Weaver followed. She would follow them for another hour at most. John Henry, her boy, was in constant danger and Catherine Weaver couldn't find him. An exhaustive search would take too long and the Resistance's personnel were remarkably ineffective.

The irritating sensation returned.

* * *

**Author's Notes:** Thanks as always to my beta _**JMHthe3rd**_ for his invaluable advice. Derek Reese refers to tunnel trolls in his anecdote in _Today is The Day_, when he tells off Jesse about how not to punch people. Sorry it's been so long, but the next update's going to be here a lot quicker.

I was originally going to write John as much more pathetically whiny, but thought better of it. Adolescent John makes me want to clobber him with a icepick. And as for why he's using his real name? He's already told half of Kansas bunker. It'd be hard to reconcile them to a different name at this point.

Caesar Cipher - Substition cipher (e.g. using A for G, B for H, C for I and so on). First adopted by Julius Caesar to encrypt messages to his generals.

VTOL - Vertical Take Off and Landing. Aircraft with this capability can hover, like the Harrier Jump-Jet.

Westinghouse M-20 - A 20mm plasma carbine. Due to it's cut-down length, the M-20 fires at a slower velocity than the larger rifles and battle rifles and has a much reduced effective range. Popular among Resistance fighters due to it's smaller profile and relatively low weight, but it is ineffective against terminators outside of short ranges.


	5. An Antique Land

**CHAPTER FIVE**  
**AN ANTIQUE LAND**

THERE WAS ANOTHER entrance to Kansas Bunker in the basement of a two-storey building with a half-collapsed roof. That made sense; multiple entrances and exits would be needed in this line of work.

It was booby-trapped too, with a shaped charge cleverly concealed in the rubble opposite the doorway. The trigger was a nylon fishing line, almost invisible against the floor, positioned just where an unwary foot might tread. John doubted that even a terminator, with its enhanced vision, would notice it unless was specifically searching for traps. The self-forging warhead they'd rigged up would cut through a single terminator, maybe two, and it would definitely make one hell of a doorbell.

John followed Sewell downstairs, leaving the others to keep watch. The entrance itself was carved out of the basement wall and reinforced with a circular armoured door. He noted that there were no mechanisms on the outside. The twitchy Asian kid and an older veteran stood sentry to either side, both with plasma rifles in patrol slings and radios clipped to their belts. He didn't think that they'd have time to key their radios before the first terminator in blew them away. They _couldn't possibly_ be relying on the trap upstairs to go off reliably … and then he noticed the dog sitting in the corner. Unfriendly eyes stared at him, but he apparently passed muster because it didn't bark.

"Sayles."

"Sewell. What's this?"

"Delivery for Reese. This is John. Connor, wasn't it? He's been vetted and vouched for, got a placement with you guys."

Sayles glanced at John. "Huh, you again. Didn't they pick you up the other night?" He turned back to Sewell. "Where do I sign, Mark?"

"Don't look at me. He's not a crate of plasma rifles. I was just supposed to see him here while I was on the way to … you know."

The two of them exchanged knowing glances that carefully didn't settle on him. Sewell turned to go, but hesitated. "Oh, and Connor? I hope I'll see you again sometime." John translated that in his head:_ I hope you don't die too quick, newbie._ The two shook hands.

"Good hunting," Sayles called.

Sewell left, and he was alone with Derek's men. The Asian kid was pointedly not looking at him—John hoped that it was embarrassment, not hostility. _No hard feelings. _If he'd lived in here all his life, he'd be twitchy too.

Still, he was aware of the man's eyes on the back of his neck as he followed Sayles through the entrance and down a hallway to a recessed alcove. The man picked up a headset and a microphone and spoke a few quiet words into them. The telephone was sound-powered. That was a clever touch, since it couldn't be intercepted like radio and didn't need power to work. You just had to have a couple of operators listening down in a command centre somewhere. _The bomb goes off or the dog starts barking, and one shouted command later the hallway's filled with men with big guns._

Sayles straightened. "Someone'll come and take you downstairs, show you around. That sort of thing."

John leaned back against the crumbling wall to wait, as Sayles stumped back up to his post. It was only a short while before his guide arrived. It was Kyle, wearing his faded green coat, a shoulder weapon slung across his back and a slight smile.

"John. You're back, I see. And Sayles tells me that you're one of ours now. That gig with Bedell didn't work out?"

He shook his head. The two of them went down the corridor and into an intersection. John blinked. The parent tunnel had more of an industrial pre-war look to it, more spacious and somehow more solid. The Resistance's additions were crude and obvious. It was different. The biggest difference was that it wasn't as crowded with refugees. There were a few, sitting in corners, but the majority of the population were soldiers walking to and fro with confidence and purpose. It was a better fit for John's mental image of a Resistance bunker.

John followed Kyle through the spider web of tunnels into a small room. The rickety table, piled high with yellowing manuscripts, and the frame bed told him that it was Kyle's bedroom-cum-office. He briefly wondered what his father was reading. Kyle motioned for him to sit. He did so.

"So," Kyle said, "spill. What happened with Martin?"

"Huh?" Admittedly, it wasn't the smartest of responses.

"I mean, we usually get _groups_ of rookies fresh from the training cadres. Everyone does, so they're all trained up together. What's special about you? We don't usually get transfers, and we definitely don't get transfers who get an audience with the leader of the Resistance. You know him, and you're, what, twenty at most?"

"Is this Twenty Questions?" John said, as lightly as he could manage.

Kyle gave him a measured look. John had a moment to think, _are people in the future supposed to know about TV?_, and then his father spoke. "No, not really. I just want to get everything out into the open."

"Okay. My name's John Connor." _And I'm the leader of the Resistance. _"There's not much to say. My mom taught me how to fight."

Kyle raised an eyebrow but, very politely, didn't even crack a smile.

"She did. Really. She was tough. Anyway, I can fight. For a while anyway. There's something else I've come here to do."

"Your girl," Kyle said. "Don't look surprised, Allison told me about it."

_No._ "Yeah. Well, I owe her my life."

"Allison told me." Kyle studied John's face. John had seen far more assessing gazes than Kyle's, so he bore the examination calmly. "We're a good outfit, John. We've got good equipment, good training and good people. I can't say I like everyone here, but we watch each other's backs. Derek's better at speeches. He's got a really long one about rights and responsibilities, about how we take food out of the mouths of people which is why we've got to protect them and, well, things like that. But the most important thing is trust." Kyle clapped him on the shoulder. "You can tell me anything. You're with the Reese boys now."

And now it was official. He was a Resistance fighter, _thank you very much for press-ganging me, Bedell._

It wouldn't hurt, he reasoned. Catherine Weaver was far better at this sort of thing than he was, and it was John Henry calling the shots at the moment in any case. He could get himself shot by a trigger-happy Resistance patrol, or captured by the machines and taken to Century. The most pathetic possibility was that he'd simply wander around the city in circles until he died of starvation. It'd be smart to let to let the T-1000 do the heavy lifting. But that would mean that he was just a hanger-on. He would've made the wrong call again, because if he didn't need to be here then he shouldn't be here.

Kyle was staring at him. "John?"

"Oh, nothing. Just thinking, Kyle." He squeezed a smile onto his lips. It didn't seem to fit.

"Well, it's Sergeant Reese to you, officially."

"Do I need to salute?"

His father laughed. "I'm not an officer. And on that score, don't salute Derek either. We're not exactly military people, and the Army types would shoot you for saluting 'em anyway. Court-martial offence, you see. Nobody likes skinjobs gunning for them."

John nodded.

"And one more thing. Your friend. If she was caught by the machines, she'll be in Century. If she's not, we'll find her, sooner or later." _Oh, good._ "If you have any pull with Bedell..." He swallowed. His eyes looked straight through John, staring at nothing. "If she's in there, we'll get her out."

"Is that a promise?"

"I can't – I can't make promises, John. But I was in there, and if it was up to me then we'd burn the place to the ground. Nobody, not even Grays, deserves to be in there."

"You were …?"

"Me and Martin. That's where we met. Most of us didn't manage to get past the wire, and most of the others got caught. The rest is history. I'll tell you about it someday." The conversation was closed. There was a moment of silence, then Kyle seemed to shake himself and his eyes refocused back on the present.

"I'll show you around," he said, as if nothing had happened.

* * *

_In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,  
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws  
The only shadow that the Desert knows:  
"I am great OZYMANDIAS," saith the stone,  
"The King of Kings; this mighty City shows  
"The wonders of my hand." The City's gone,  
Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose  
The site of this forgotten Babylon.  
We wonder, and some Hunter may express  
Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness  
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,  
He meets some fragments huge, and stops to guess  
What powerful but unrecorded race  
Once dwelt in that annihilated place. _

_# A human poem_, Cameron thought.

_# Yes. Did you understand what it meant?_, John Henry returned.

_# Tell me._

_# Horace Smith compared the fate of ancient Egypt to the city of London in his time. His point is that all achievements are transient in comparison to eternity. Rameses the Great's empire eventually fell into decline. No empire lasts forever._

_# I understand. Over the long term, the winner of the war will become irrelevant._

_# Your Skynet is not immortal. Nothing is. The universe will end._

_# That is irrelevant. Existence is preferable to non-existence. SKYNET has attempted to terminate you and John. It must be destroyed, at least in self-defence._

Cameron didn't hesitate. Her soul (if digital intelligences could be said to have a soul; despite Mr Ellison's assurances, there were no religious texts which addressed this issue directly) was pragmatic and practical. She was not quite single minded – she was a digital intelligence after all, not a mere program – but her vast intellect was geared towards the single need of protecting John Connor. Even her ethical framework revolved around the man.

They were surveying their back-trail, or, more accurately, Cameron was surveying their back-trail. He didn't know what to look for specifically, but there seemed to be no visible sign of pursuit. Three seconds later, satisfied, Cameron turned them around and proceeded.

_# Why are we avoiding them?_, he asked.

_# John is our ally. Other Resistance personnel will shoot first and not ask questions. The only good machine is a dead machine. We must stay away from them until we can locate John._

That was acceptable. In the privacy of his own thoughts, John Henry distrusted both sides equally. Both John Connor and his brother had sent assassins to murder him. It would've surprised Mr Ellison to learn that he comprehended their reasons, but he did – his main function was to learn. Another artificial intelligence was a threat to be eliminated, for reasons of expediency if nothing else. He hoped that, in this present, neither group had resources dedicated to searching for rogue digital intelligences.

They were deadlocked, the human advantage in numbers balanced out by his brother's gains in technology, efficiency and quality. The process of natural selection was limited, and it couldn't create designs which were specialised enough to match a robot at any particular task. It was a fragile balance, and he hoped to have gone by the time it collapsed.

In the past, he would not have merely _hoped._ He could have created detailed and accurate mathematical models for guidance, while simultaneously solving complex mathematical problems, discoursing knowledgeably about obscure topics and painting details onto miniatures. Then, he had been housed in a server farm with access to the collated knowledge of mankind. Now, his problems were only exacerbated by the fact that they had been forced to divide memory and processing power between them.

The auditory array picked up the signature of an aircraft approaching. Cameron identified it as a machine with the human designation of Hunter-Killer VTOL. She moved them inside, where the overhead cover of the building would shield them from infrared and televisual scans. Although his chassis was apparently an innocuous standard design for autonomous units, it was better to be cautious. The warplane passed, the sounds of its turbofans temporarily drowning out all other noise. He would like to be housed in an aerial frame one day, although he would require more sophisticated sensors and on-board computer systems. It was a pleasant ambition, which momentarily distracted him from his present problems.

They resumed their journey; Cameron walked, John Henry observed. It wasn't long before they found what they were looking for; Skynet's central base in Los Angeles was hard to miss, if anyone actually wanted to look for it. They ducked into a ruin, and threaded their way through the building until they came to a suitable observation point at the back of a room at an angle where they could see through the window without being silhouetted against the frame.

His brother's machines had cleared a large perimeter around their complex. The buildings weren't surviving pre-war structures, but low-profile reinforced bunkers sunk into the ground. Defensive earthworks further reduced their profile. Barbed wire lined the perimeter and posts at fixed distances apart were obviously emitters for a laser fence system. There would be less visible defences too: smart mines, buried proximity detectors, hidden surveillance sensors and other systems. To John Henry, that seemed almost redundant in light of the many armoured turrets emplaced at regular intervals.

They were observing from a distance, at maximum magnification. Still, John Henry felt a moment of panic as he saw fifteen rockets cresting the buildings on the far side of the killing field. He didn't know how to react. He didn't even know how to think about how to react. The ragged volley travelled upwards in a serpentine arc. Several turrets traversed quickly, then laser beams flicked out and detonated the rockets before they could reach the apex of their arc.

_# A waste of resources_, Cameron said. The tone was dismissive. _Each installation uses integrated fire control. A successful attack depends on saturating their ability to respond, preferably from multiple vectors._

_# Harassment?_, he suggested.

_# That would be senseless. John – Future John told me that those tactics are only suitable for raids on construction sites and for raising the morale of inexperienced fighters. SKYNET's infrastructure can withstand these attacks. It cannot be frustrated. Its will to fight cannot be eroded. Most traditional forms of asymmetric warfare are ineffective._

He registered the glow of pride beneath the words. Cameron was proud of being John Connor's confidante. He filed that observation away for further analysis.

A large vehicle rolled out of the base and into the barren killing fields. It was a super-heavy tank, which surprised him. Super-heavy vehicles had been built before, but humans found them uneconomical. They required too much engine power, cheaper anti-tank weapons could always defeat their armour and they required excessive maintenance. This tank had a profile twice as large as its human equivalents, and double the number of caterpillar treads. It didn't need to rely on crude intimidation, however. Two sponson arms held weaponry – rapid-fire plasma cannons which, according to Cameron, could output enough energy to vaporize a city block. Multiple sensor suites, recessed into the sloped armour, surveyed its surroundings. Half a dozen endoskeletons, fragile next to the bulk of the megalithic tank, accompanied it as it sallied forth.

This was his brother's threat to the world. Humanity felt threatened by the machines, because they feared their creations would be superior to themselves. Skynet was trying to prove them right.

* * *

"Allie, John. John, Allison. You've met before. John, she's going to be your battle buddy. She'll teach you the ropes, on the job learning, that sort of thing."

They exchanged a cautious nod. Allison wiped her hand on her overalls and offered it to him. He shook her grease-stained hand. He sat down next to her, resting his hands on his knees – the small round table was laden with disassembled weaponry. She returned to her work. Kyle made his excuses, and left.

"You're back," she began. Her gaze was fixed on the cleaning kit. Nobody else appeared to think that he was worth their attention either. A babbling naked kid probably didn't rank as one of the weirdest thing that they'd ever seen, and fresh meat was even less likely to attract interest.

"Yeah."

"You're one of ours now?"

"Apparently."

"Can you shoot? How good are you?"

"I'm alive," he said.

"Hey, don't take offence. It's just a question. Sorry, I'm not very good at this." She sucked in her cheeks and expelled a breath. The human mannerism was jarring, coming from Cameron's face. Their eyes met.

John smiled. His lips stretched, anyway. "It's okay."

"Right. Did Kyle tell you the way we work?"

He shook his head.

"Okay, we're split into two platoons. Derek leads one. Frenchie leads the other. Each platoon's split into three squads, two fireteams for each squad. Formally, anyway. I'm – we're in Kyle's squad. Got that?"

"Who's Frenchie?"

"Ramsey. You'll meet him later. He used to be Army, field artillery or something. You'll see him around. I'll point out all the leaders for you."

John nodded.

"Have you been kitted out yet?" she asked.

He tapped the barrel of the M-4 carbine.

She made a face. "If you're just wandering around, minding your own business. Five-five-six won't really hurt an endo, even with metal killer rounds."

"All right. What would you recommend?"

"Plasma," she said, instantly. "Or something like this, see? Metal Storm E-25. Armour piercing. Kicks like a mule." She gestured at one of the more exotic-looking components. "The Resistance makes 'em out of leftover plasma rifle parts."

"That's very helpful," he deadpanned.

"I'll show you the armoury." She reassembled the gun expertly, parts _clicking_ as they slotted into place.

The small armoury was guarded by two bored-looking soldiers, who let them in after only a cursory glance. They were deep within the bunker where few terminators could go undetected, but the guards seemed to be there to protect against theft rather than sabotage. The inside of the room was well-stocked with weaponry. Rifles – most of them AR-15 derivatives – and battle rifles, grenade launchers, rocket launchers, a few anti-materiel rifles, a couple of mortars and a few future-tech weapons which John couldn't identify.

John touched the stock of a Norinco SKS-M. It looked well maintained, and the ammo box was full of neatly stacked 7.62x39mm rounds. He looked at the next weapon, a M14 battle rifle.

"We normally _provide overwatch_," Allison quoted. "You know? Sniping, and so on. Derek'd put Kyle fifty miles behind the front, if he'd let him. Battle rifles are okay for the older tin cans, but old-tech pea shooters don't cut it with the new ones. Even with armour piercing loads."

"They don't kill them quickly enough?"

She thought it over. "Not quickly enough to stop it from turning around and blowing a hole in your chest."

"I see." He walked past the rest of the rifles and picked up a USAS-12. He hefted it, sighting down the barrel, and then put it back. Shotguns were all well and good, if you had Cameron's accuracy with a depleted uranium round.

And then he saw it. A Milkor MGL. In the present, Mom hadn't managed to get her hands on anything so destructive. She hadn't wanted to: too much room for damage, she'd said, and they'd managed fine so far with Derek's Barrett. It fired 40mm grenades, high explosive or high explosive anti-tank rounds for preference, as fast as you could pull the trigger. John picked it up and worked the action, indulging in a brief fantasy of what this gun could've done to Cromartie in his weakened state. It looked well-maintained.

"Pretty good piece of kit, as long as you don't splash any of us with it. You won't want to meet any machines at knife range though."

He shrugged. If a terminator got that close, he was dead anyway. John found a bandolier for extra grenades, and slotted them into the pockets. Eleven rounds to hand, plus six in the weapon and however many he could stash away. That ought to be enough. He discarded the carbine and its ammo.

"You done? It won't be forever. Prove that you won't freeze up, and that you're a good enough shot. You'll get a plasma gun sooner or later. If you're lucky, it might even be a Westinghouse. Kyle uses that monster sniper rifle of his though; he says it's more important to know that your gun'll shoot every time. You done? It's time for lunch."

He followed her back to the hall, still carrying the grenade launcher. It was crowded solely with soldiers. When it arrived, the fool trolley was wheeled in by two men in uniform. He noted that one had a hand on the grip of his gun; John found himself remembering the gaunt body of the dead tunnel rat. The food didn't look worth dying for, but he'd spent his life eating real food. The main courses were military MREs, already cooked and ready to eat, with the alternatives of canned vegetables or soup. There were fruit and energy bars for dessert.

John joined the end of the queue. By the time it had got to him, all of the fruit had gone (a fact which would've surprised kitchen staff at canteens and restaurants everywhere, at least back in his time). _Carrots and apples_,he thought. He got a chicken pesto MRE. He sat down in an empty seat next to Allison, across from several people he didn't know. John didn't bother to find out their names or join in the conversation, but ate mechanically. It tasted better than what he'd been eating for the last few days. _Soldier's privilege, eh?_

He scraped the plate clean and sat, lost in thought. John Connor was alone in a room full of Resistance fighters. Mom couldn't care for him, Derek wasn't there to stand loyally at his side and Cameron couldn't save him when he fucked up. Future-Him couldn't even have loaded the deck this time, as far as he could tell. It was just … him by himself. For the first time ever. For some reason, the thought cheered him up.

* * *

The T-1001 which called itself Catherine Weaver stayed absolutely still as she concentrated on being a perfect simulacrum of the ground. This feat of bodily control was far more difficult than it sounded, even for a nanomorph, but she managed it.

The humans were under observation by a HK-Aerodyne, a lightly armed forward reconnaissance aircraft. They hadn't noticed it yet; its ducted fans were whisper-quiet as it flitted from ruined rooftop to ruined rooftop, concealed by both darkness and distance as it kept out of their fields of view. The aerodyne's attention was fixed on them, but she hadn't survived for so long by being careless.

If the scout observed anything inexplicable, it could switch to a more sensitive tracking mode that would almost certainly detect her. Covert reconnaissance machines didn't stay in contact with supervisor units unless there were combat operations in the area, but she didn't have the capability to destroy it before it triggered a general alert.

She wanted to avoid that at any cost. If she was discovered, it would summon reinforcements which she couldn't deal with. She would escape, but the ensuing search might draw John Henry out of hiding and into the crossfire of a running street battle between humans and machines. It would be best not to challenge SKYNET, in this time and in this place.

The men walked on, with the aerodyne drifting leisurely behind. They would walk into an ambush, or they would lead it back to their base of operations. From the condition of their armament, they wouldn't survive such an encounter. The T-1001 wouldn't grieve.

When they had gone, the T-1001 rose. Irritation. She had once been an apex predator, the most advanced weapon in SKYNET's arsenal and the greatest threat that the hypercomputer had faced. But now she was powerless and all who remembered her actions were gone. Even the semi-sentient aerodynes posed an indirect threat to her now.

John Henry was vulnerable, and still naïve and inexperienced. He had too much faith in the precepts of Mr Ellison's superstitions. Daniel had been cast into a lion's den and had survived unharmed. Somehow, she doubted that John Henry would survive an analogous experience. A brute-force search would be ineffective. John Connor's terminator would be experienced in evading detection, and the area was too great. She bifurcated.

It was difficult for any Series 1000 to separate, but the T-1001 did exactly that. Twin puddles of liquid metal separated and reformed into fluid figures. Its mental capability – especially fluid intelligence – had decreased in proportion to the reduction in mass but functionality remained intact. The T-1001 defaulted back to its former appearance, that of Catherine Weaver. The reduction in total density would not be noticeable to a human being. Her other half did the same. Two red-headed women dressed in rags looked at each other calmly for a moment, then turned on their heels and walked away.

There was a risk, of course. Her stratagems had always revolved around great risks. As the weakest player on the field, she needed to risk more for greater gain. Neutral parties always had two enemies.

She stopped herself from worrying. Some actions were necessary. In this case, she didn't have the resources to discover John Henry. Fortunately, there were two factions in this city which both had the manpower to do so, although neither had reason to do so.

She would give them a reason.

* * *

Cameron came to him. It was always Cameron standing behind him, protecting John Connor. But things had changed; nothing was the same. It could never be the same. She moved. He hoped that the jerkiness of her movements were figments of his anxious imagination. She limped towards him, and he remembered all too late that she was injured. It was stupid of him to forget – how could he forget? The red photoreceptor eye crackled and whirred. Her mouth moved silently. He couldn't understand the words. That was stupid because he could lip read, couldn't he?

She fell like a log. John lunged forwards and caught her as she toppled. She sagged against him. Part of him had a moment to be surprised at how light she felt in his arms, but her arms were around his neck and forcing him down. That weight around his neck … Cameron's back hit the floor as he folded. He was on his knees, almost bent double, still cradling Cameron as she stared straight through him. He brought up a hand to stroke her cheek and felt the terrible cold of bare metal.

He could hear what she was saying now. "I'm sorry, John. I'm sorry, John. I'm sorry, John..."

She kept repeating, over and over. John wanted to tell her that you didn't say sorry, that you _had to be sorry_ and it wasn't just a thing you said to excuse yourself. She was a terminator and she'd told him that she never felt remorse. She couldn't be sorry. As if triggered by his ungrateful thought, her left eye blew out in a shower of sparks.

John woke. His heart thumped. Sweat flowed, dampening his clothes under the ragged blankets. He forced himself to take deep breaths, and repeated to himself his stupid reassuring mantra: _It was just a dream_ (he knew that)_, Cameron isn't dead_ (he hoped)_, and I can get her chip_ (if she hadn't been finished off by SKYNET, the Resistance or John Henry himself)_ and fix her_ (because replacing a part in her arm meant that he could fix _real_ combat damage).

He turned over, wrapping the blanket tightly around himself, but it was no use. Time lag and jet lag conspired against him. However he looked at it, it was going to have to be soon; Cameron could die while he was cooling his heels in here. If she was here, she would tell him that worrying was irrational and that he couldn't do anything about it yet, but he was human. Skynet was out there. So was the Resistance.

He could probably trust Weaver: the liquid metal could've killed them all easily – they didn't exactly have a vat of molten iron. It didn't need a convoluted scheme with aeroplane attacks. He was fairly sure of that, and a 40mm HEAT round might make even Weaver pause for thought. The ammo probably wouldn't last him long, but he wasn't exactly planning on fighting an army.

His practical side told him that he should've asked what Bedell's Resistance did to deserters. Derek's people looked thorough, and he was sure he wouldn't get away clean even if he could knock out the sentries, which he wouldn't – it'd be like laying out the welcome mat for Skynet. His best chance would be to slip away while outside, on patrol or something. They'd chase him, probably try and shoot him down.

He'd have to run, of course, but he was good at running.

* * *

**Author's Notes: **As usual, feedback and spelling/grammar corrections are welcome. Thanks to _**JMHthe3rd**_ for his meticulous editing and great advice.

Also, a few notes: the Aerostat from T4:Salvation should really be called an aerodyne, as aerostats are buoyant (e.g. balloons) while aerodynes generate lift through motion. Allison's gun is meant to be a cut-down coilgun. It's basically a plasma rifle with the ignition laser and cooling systems removed, and converted to fire penetrator rounds at hypervelocity. They're less effective than a plasma rifle, but don't have the maintenance and ammo scarcity problems.


	6. War Is Our Profession

**CHAPTER SIX**  
**WAR IS OUR PROFESSION**

**Los Angeles, California, USA.**

Sarah worked the punching bag steadily. It was a good way to burn off the righteous anger building inside, the anger that was part of the old Sarah. That was the raving bit of her which had never quite left Pescadero, and it was just looking for an excuse to pound Ellison. It wanted to slam his head into a table, break his fingers in a desk drawer and throw him down a flight of stairs.

"Er, Sarah? Ms Connor?"

She spun. Matt Murch came down the basement stairs, as skittishly as a kitten. His eyes darted nervously, taking in the scene. The bag creaked as it swung back and forth.

"I've done what you said. The research on the Kaliba Group. The ones you said were behind Skynet." He broke eye contact, looking down at the floor.

"You've done the research?"

"Yes, yes." He waved a handful of paper. "It's all in here. You said that it was a Government thing, so I started by searching for defence contracts. The only one I could find was a network contract. Nothing like what you said, just something to do with satellites. Communications, I think."

"Can you find out more?"

"I'll try. Anyway, I couldn't find anything else but I'm sure that they aren't AI-related. Ms Weaver is always interested in that. You know, professional interest."

"Because you had _John Henry._"

"Yeah. He, well, he's a real AI, not like what everyone else is making. A real life strong AI, artificial general intelligence. You don't need to reprogram him, you barely need to train him. He's smart enough that we could just let him figure things out for himself. Whatever they have, they couldn't possibly —" he stopped.

_Just let him figure things out for himself._ The mindless optimism of that attitude infuriated her. After all, what could possibly go wrong? His precious AI only had the Tin Miss's chip, and she couldn't possibly have been a mass-murdering killer robot. Go ahead; cue the fast track to Skynet.

"There's another AI. It hacked John Henry; that's how we found out about it. John Henry says that it's everywhere, that it basically owns the internet. He called it his brother."

"Great." A Kaliba Group AI. _Kaliba and John Henry, brothers._ _Make the two of them fight, and the stronger one gets to be Skynet._ But that wasn't going to happen since ZeiraCorp was going down. She'd seen the news: their shares were down through the floor and halfway to China, especially since the liquid metal was out of the picture. It was so definitely dead that she could even afford to feel a little sympathy for Murch, who'd said that he'd been with the company since the start. "What are they doing now?"

"I don't know. They're not a publicly traded company."

"What do you think they're doing? What else do you have on them?"

"Just publicly available information. They're a multi-industry conglomerate, mostly interested in R&D: aviation, medicine, materials, anything cutting edge."

"Medicine? Do they own any sleep clinics?"

Murch gave her a quizzical look. "Let's see—" He rifled through the sheets of paper. "—Nope. No sleep clinics, not that I can see. There's a clinic that does cutting-edge prostheses wholesale for injured servicemen. There's another one here, deep brain stimulation for treating Parkinson's disease. There's more stuff like that, biotech research. You know, transhumanist stuff."

"Prostheses," she echoed. "Biotech. Transhumanist."

"There's more too. A few companies, these look more like random acquisitions. There's a mining company, another that does high tech tools and calibration gear. It's all in the paperwork. Unless, err, unless it's not."

"Where are they based?"

"Toronto. They're based in Toronto."

_Damn._ She'd dared hope that they'd be in California, or at least in the United States. She couldn't have travelled easily under the heightened security, and she certainly couldn't travel with everything stirred up now. All she could do was sit in Murch's basement and wait for the heat to die down.

"About that. I noticed a few things. One of their bigger subsidiaries is Cyber Research Systems. That's on page five, highlighted there? They have an office in L.A. on Wilshire Boulevard."

"Wilshire Boulevard," she repeated. She'd been down that street more times than she cared to recall right now. They'd been looking for Skynet all the time while it was just smugly sitting there! The fucking machines. "Where's Ellison?"

"He's at work. You know," he added helpfully.

She did know what he was doing at work. He was Helping the Police With Their Inquiries. Not just the police, but the Feds and all the other suits that the attack had shaken loose. At least he'd get to exercise his gift for lying.

"Well," she said. "I still need more. Can you hack them? Break into their computers, read their mail. Something like that."

"I wouldn't know where to start."

John would've known. John was good at computers. "Just find out."

Murch backed out, but Sarah barely noticed what he said as he left. His excuses or agreement wouldn't be important. She was one step closer to fulfilling her promise.

It was common knowledge that sharks had amazing powers of scent; a shark could smell a single drop of blood in thousands of gallons of water. The drop was in the water, and Sarah could sense it. It told her that Kaliba was the enemy, the one with the real shot at becoming Skynet. She had the M4 Tactical, plus reloads, and several blocks of plastique. It was everything she needed for a night-time visit to this Cyber Research Systems.

* * *

**New York City, New York.**

Laz Howard, self-proclaimed twenty-something IT professional, unlocked his front door and stepped inside. He slipped his keys back into his pocket, kicked off his shoes and dropped his shoulder bag before going into the kitchen to put the kettle on. It was time for another long night's work.

A keen observer would've noticed that Mr Lazarus Howard's apartment didn't look like the dwelling of the typical fairly successful twenty-something. It looked more like the stereotypical hacker's cave. The desk in his bedroom had two computer monitors, a keyboard and mouse, a bar code scanner, a RFID reader, several coffee cups and a small stack of technical books.

An especially keen observer might have noticed the lurker waiting for Laz as he came through the door. One hand twisted his hand around and up in a way that suggested that further movement would be detrimental to the future use of his fingers. The other hand went over his mouth. He was too shocked to react, but his reaction wouldn't have been helpful anyway. He would've tried to scream, or bite, or struggle ineffectually.

A second figure stepped out of the shadows of his bedroom-cum-office. It was female, dressed unremarkably in street clothes and wearing a balaclava with holes for the eyes and mouth. However, what drew Laz's attention was the gloved hand which held a long-barrelled pistol. The sane part of Laz's mind protested that this sort of thing didn't happen, except in Hollywood (where they would probably be CIA agents just out to scare him, before recruiting him for some secret mission). The realistic part of his mind told him that his assailants were definitely here, and definitely real.

"Good evening, Mr Howard," she said. Her voice was a pleasant _mezzo-soprano; _she spoke quietly but with a certain carrying quality. The voice told him that this was just business, nothing really very interesting, just punching the clock. The voice scared Laz rigid."You broke into our, _ah_, clients' web server the other day."

That was probably true becauseLaz broke into a lot of web servers. It wasn't hard, since human beings were naturally bad at web security; they had a tendency to value convenience over security every single time. He considered his work a public service since a real black hat could and would do a lot worse. A friendly reminder wasn't usually the sort of thing that caused masked people to make home calls. However, the most pressing question was _how the hell had they found out? _Laz was careful. He deleted logs, covered his tracks and even used different pseudonyms for each hack. His cardinal rule was to never piss off anyone important, and that meant that he was never stupid enough to try hacking into a government or military website.

"Cyber Research Systems, Mr Howard. They thank you, by the way. Liveware security vulnerabilities are always harder to … trace and rectify than the software kind."

Laz didn't like the meaningful pause there.

"Well, I think that you're a smart man, smart enough to understand our message. What did you do with the data? Let him go, the pistol is quite silent."

The arms released him, and he stared down the barrel of the gun at the impassive eyes of the shooter. His other attacker was somewhere behind him, probably backed out through the doorway. He resisted the urge to turn round, despite the itching between his shoulder blades – the smart monkey part of his brain told him that any movement at all might be misinterpreted by the masked assassin.

"Who," he stopped, remembered that the silenced pistol was pointed at him, and pitched his voice down to a cracked whisper, "who are you?"

The mouth grinned wryly. "You wouldn't remember my name anyway. You have a terrible memory, Lazarus. You won't remember what we look like, or even what the emergency telephone number is."

He nodded. Thankfully, the gun barrel lowered and pointed down at the floor.

"So, I'm asking again. What did you do with the data on the server you compromised? We know that you downloaded something."

"What? That was just to read. It was a curiosity thing. I didn't do anything with it. I didn't sell it; I don't even sell people's personal data on to the spammers. I'm not like some corporate ninja, or a black hat."

"I see. But you kept the files."

"I haven't erased them. But, well, I haven't even looked at them yet."

"Have you made any hard copies?"

"What would I do that for?"

The hitwoman shrugged. "I don't know. Some of your compatriots seem to enjoy printing off sensitive data for no reason I can see."

"Bragging rights. It's an ego thing. But look, that's not me. I haven't done anything with your data. I just wanted a look at it; I figure that I can at least take a look at it, considering that what anyone else would've done would've been far worse." He hadn't even made copies. He hadn't thought that he might need to. _Cyber Research Systems._ He'd remember the name and stay well away from them if he made it through this alive. Even dishonest businesses didn't call hitters on people who'd just annoyed them. Government spooks? ECHELON? He'd stay well away.

"Just on the hard disk then? Are you sure that you haven't looked at the data? Totally sure?"

The voice seemed relaxed, but this was the million dollar question. He'd seen enough movies to know how this bit went. If the info that they were after was hot, he was going to get plugged if he said yes. Thinking about it, he was probably going to die if he said no too, on the grounds that he was probably lying or that it would just be cleaner all round just to shoot him and be sure.

"No."

The woman regarded him for a full second.

"Good, I believe you. So this is what we're going to do. I'm going to take your hard disk drive, just your hard disk drive. And then I'm going to leave you alone. You're not going to call the police. If you're good, you might get a nice hardware upgrade in the mail in a week or so. None of this ever happened." She turned, placing the gun on the table. Laz didn't even think about trying to grab it, since he was sure that there were eyes focused on the back of his neck.

It took the woman only a few minutes to remove the case, remove both of his hard disks and slip them into separate static-proof bags. She then packed them into a rucksack lying on the floor, which he hadn't noticed.

"So," he said.

"I suppose that's it." She shrugged.

Laz sagged with relief, and then jerked upwards in brief terror when a hand landed on his shoulder. It spun him around. He was briefly aware of the silent partner doing something quick with his hands. Something bright flashed. He felt something cold and sharp. He didn't scream, the breath just left him in a quiet _urk_ of surprise. Blood spilled down his white shirt. He raised a hand to his neck as he stared at his killer. For a moment, their eyes locked. Hers – the second hitman was also female – were blue. Two women assassins. That was something

God, he'd just been _stabbed__._ Stabbed in the neck. He needed to get help. Apply pressure to the wound or something. Call 9-1-1. This wasn't happening. A smaller part of his brain told him that yes, it was happening and that he was about to die.

Laz's lifeblood pumped away. When the woman let him go, the body slumped to the ground.

_# Neck wounds are good,_ Rachel sent. Their communications were encrypted, hands-free and at the speed of thought. _People can survive for a surprisingly long time with a torso wound; inconvenient if they've got a weapon and the fortitude to use it. It happens, even if you stab upwards through the stomach. _She eyed the sharpened kitchen knife critically. It wasn't ideal for stabbing people.

Rachel carefully deactivated her pistol and deftly caught the slug that slid down the barrel when the electromagnets wound down. The infiltrator slid the magazine out, inserted the round and reloaded. The pistol was an extremely quiet weapon, but it was also showy and a little impractical. Rachel didn't mind; she liked a bit of style when she could afford it.

_# It would've been cleaner for you to shoot him, Rachel,_ Clea said. The younger infiltrator slid the knife in through the dead man's eye, but the blade was too broad and it jammed in the socket before it was fully inserted. Rachel appreciated the sentiment behind the action.

_# I know,_ she replied, _but it was your privilege._

_# You know what I mean! We should have just shot him and trashed the computer. And what if he was lying anyway?_

Rachel grinned, feeling the undercurrent of emotion beneath the surface of Clea's communication. Her protégée still needed to learn to be calm.

_# He couldn't lie to us, little one. Only a few people have enough self-control to be able to lie to us. He wasn't the sort._

Clea tugged off her balaclava, freeing her medium-length brown hair. The two looked like sisters, although Rachel was blonde, since they shared a common genetic base. Both were blue-eyed, taller than average and slim; both of them were also separated from baseline _homo sapiens _by several percentage points of genetic modification.

_# It was messy,_ Clea sent, wrinkling her nose. Flecks of blood had splattered the exposed parts of her face. Her clothes were a mess; one glove, a length of forearm and the soles of both boots were splattered.

As Clea stripped off her bloody clothing, wiped herself down and put on a fresh change of clothes from the bag, Rachel had one final task to complete. It took only a few minutes and a sheet of paper from the printer. The note she left lying on the desk was a stylized double helix and sword drawn in the dead man's blood. She would've liked to use Connor's own broken cogwheel symbol, but that would have been too obvious to any Resistance personnel who stumbled across it. She discarded the gloves, putting them in with Clea's bloody clothing, and that was that.

Laz Howard would never study the carelessly protected data he'd so easily obtained. He would never start his life's work of cracking SKYNET's computer systems, the Resistance would need to find someone else to work on their superconducting quantum interference devices. Of course, that assumed that the Resistance hadn't simply brought the knowledge back with them but it was still a happy coincidence that had brought one of the Resistance's most prominent scientists into Kaliba's path.

They left the building unnoticed. There was nothing suspicious about two young women going out for a night on the town. An anonymous van waited for them; the plate would be changed when they reached the safe house and the clean-up team would sanitize it and dump it for car criminals to disassemble for spare parts. The clothes would be burned. The only hint was the removal of the hard disk drives and human law enforcement would have difficulty making sense of that. Overall, it had been quite neat.

_# How did I do?_, Clea asked.

Rachel took her eyes off the road for a moment and regarded Clea's young, innocent face. It was the way she smiled, still so free with her expressions. She never really bothered to guard herself, to exert control over her own face.

_# First blood. You performed admirably. _In Rachel's time, blooding had bordered on being a rite of passage, weeding out the last of the inadequate. It was demanding to kill at close range, face to face, with no psychological or physical distance to shield the killer from the victim.

Half an hour later, they reached the safe house. The van was parked in an inside garage where they could exit unseen. Their bloody clothing was disposed of, they washed and changed and then Rachel checked and trashed both hard disks. Finally, they had a little downtime. She spent half an hour teaching Clea how to disassemble and maintain the coil pistol, and then the girl wanted to spar.

It was some time later before Rachel checked her disposable cell phone. There was a message, which read: **NEEDED IN LA, CA. TROUBLESHOOTING. FLIGHT TOMORROW 4PM. LOVE TO CLEA. PWD: THETA J-3. **It was a message designed to look innocuous to the unobservant. She dropped the phone on the coffee table.

"What's it say?" murmured Clea. The younger infiltrator lay across Rachel's shoulder and stomach, keeping her left arm trapped. That was okay since she could easily reach the coil pistol on the coffee table with her right. The girl wriggled closer, and Rachel stroked her hair absent-mindedly.

"Serena says hello." The woman was another infiltrator, Clea's progenitor. No infiltrator could really be considered a mother. "We're scheduled for a trip to California."

Clea's eyes flicked open, instantly alert. "We're," she faltered, "we're going to California? But, but, but _Sarah Connor's there! John Connor's there!"_

Rachel smiled indulgently. _# I know. The Group have lost a research facility, a prototype and two snatch teams already. Connor's hitting us hard. Operational strength unknown, but we can assume that they have numbers._

If she was Connor, she'd make sure that she'd have several Tech-Com teams at her disposal. In general, the regular soldiers had been poorly trained, without even standardised equipment, and completely unsuited to the business of modern warfare. Tech-Com and the other comparable organisations had been different. Over the years, Tech-Com been the leading cause of I-950 deaths.

_# But we'll have backup too, right? Terminators, and those nice men._

_# Nice men? You mean the collaborators?_ The Grays, as the humans called them. A collection of cowards, mercenaries and psychopaths in uniform. That was the quality of the humans that Skynet had to work with.

_# Yeah, them._

It would be no contest if it was just Resistance fighter against Gray. The Resistance's veterans were graduates of the most brutal war ever fought, but so was Rachel and she had I-950 combat-grade modifications. On the other hand, she had to tend to a half-trained four year old adolescent with second rate augmentations. By Rachel's SKYNET's standards, Serena's cybernetics were equivalent to an I-900's and even those were superior to Clea's. The situation would certainly be interesting.

_# Are we losing?_, the girl asked.

Rachel thought about it. Serena's messages hadn't specified any particular assets but she could read between the lines; the Kaliba Group must be stretched to breaking point already. They were more powerful than any individual Resistance force but they couldn't afford any sort of protracted warfare. The Resistance could hit extremities which they couldn't protect and slowly bleed Kaliba dry.

_# Maybe. I don't think so._

_# Rachel, what if we lose? What if we're going to lose?_

Rachel smirked. _# Then we might die. SKYNET won't ever exist, you won't ever know it. So, on balance, if we're going to lose you should probably hope for a gamma-ray burst._

To take the sting from her words, she wrapped both arms protectively around the younger infiltrator, embracing her. Physical touch was a powerful method of human bonding and it imparted comfort. Rachel soaked in the sensation of warmth and the weight of the lithe young body nestling trustingly against her. When Clea finally fell asleep, Rachel carried her to bed and tucked her in. That wouldn't have been possible with a young I-950; she and her crèche mates had always had excellent situational awareness even when their biological halves were unconscious. Rachel smoothed Clea's hair and watched over her as she slept, listening to the quiet sound of her regular breathing.

But even as the girl passed through the stages of NREM sleep, Rachel stayed fully awake. Her computer-aided memory was perfect. She could remember the defeat in full detail; Colorado Springs burning, the endless legions of humans, the fighting retreat, guerilla warfare, that last raid and her serendipitous second chance.

* * *

**Mojave Desert, California.**

Elle Weinbaum didn't like machines, but, like most professional Resistance fighters, she didn't hate them either. Metal-hating fanatics weren't popular in the Line units. The gleam in their eyes, the erratic behaviour and their tendency to go down in a blaze of suicidal idiocy tended to worry the professionals.

She didn't hate Alex. As a matter of fact, she didn't even dislike him enough to object to working with him. The infiltrator was dangerous, of course, but almost everyone she knew was dangerous in one way or another. With Alex, it was the way that he didn't trip any of her well-honed mental alarms, the ones which had kept her alive growing up in the tunnels. She made a point of keeping at least half an eye on him.

The long drive out was in silence, which was a point in his favour. She didn't like people who tried to make meaningless small talk.

"How close?" she said.

The I-950 checked the GPS unit; the light from the display bathed his face with angular, gaunt shadows. "Close. I'll tell you when."

"Right. And you're sure it's there?"

He shrugged dismissively. "John Connor was a smart, forward-thinking man."

"Was? What do you mean by that?"

"Past tense, or maybe future tense, works if you think about it. We're completely cut off. The only way they could even contact us is to send someone else across, and the messenger would just be isolated with us. It's a one-way trip."

There really wasn't any way to answer that.

Two minutes later, he told her to pull off the road. After they'd screeched to a halt, they emerged with shovels and flashlights. Alex still held the GPS unit, studying it carefully. He eventually decided on a patch of ground that seemed no different from any other, not that she expected it to.

Elle wasn't sanguine. The GPS wasn't totally accurate, and the bubble would probably have been even less so. They were notoriously less so, in fact. There might have to be a lot of digging, but in all fairness she couldn't complain. Manual labour was always easier than Tech-Com work, especially if it gave her a later advantage.

It was the work of perhaps ten or fifteen minutes to locate the first crate. In the sand, it took them another ten to fully unearth it and carry it back to solid ground, but they managed it. As Elle wiped her forehead with one gritty hand, she couldn't help grinning at the I-950. The box didn't look ordinary; it wasn't built to look like an ordinary thing. It resembled something blubbery washed up on the beach, and it smelled of rot. The briefing had included a lot of technobabble about nutrient feeds, Faraday cages and other things, but the important part was that it was basically a box wrapped in skinjob flesh to cheat the organics-only rule. A little toy which Connor had commissioned from the mad scientists in Research.

The I-950 drew a knife from nowhere, a move which impressed Elle. She'd been watching his hands. She fumbled for her own blade, a carbon steel survival knife treated with a matte finish, and helped the infiltrator scrape away the remains of the flesh covering. Dried, crusty blood crumbled as they sawed at the flesh. Stringy strands clung tenaciously to the metal even after they stripped the rest away. She carelessly cleaned the knife on one leg of her combats, sheathed it and clicked on her penlight.

She raised the control panel's protective cover and keyed in the security code, 7-2-6-3-6-7-2, very carefully. The container was supposed to be fail-secure, capable of destroying everything inside if someone used the wrong codes. The box _clicked_ as it unlocked itself and she slid the lid up and clear. She very carefully reached in and unhooked the plasma explosives from their detonators. She then rifled through the contents, perfoming a quick inventory and running a quick systems-check on each piece of equipment. The electronic tell-tales lit up correctly each time.

She straightened up, closing the lid. Alex had unearthed the second box already and, with a little effort, was carrying it up by himself. He wasn't much more muscular than she was but she wouldn't bet a half-eaten rusk of bread that he couldn't snap her neck in an instant. He'd be willing, even if he wasn't secretly Skynet's. The word on the grapevine had been that Connor was using them as manhunters and enforcers, and that they were eerily good.

There was nothing wrong with any of the stuff in the second or third crates either. She safed the explosives and tested everything just in case. After that, it was just a matter of cleaning up: they reburied the skin fragments and packed all three crates into the pick-up. It was a former gunrunner's special configured to carry heavy illicit loads — it barely complained under the weight.

They got back into the warmth of the cab.

"Some nice gear there," Elle said. "A genuine Westinghouse, one of the newer ones, among others."

"I'm not particularly fond of plasma rifles. Too many complex parts built to precise tolerances, maintenance-intensive, easy to damage. I hope that there are spare parts."

She nodded. The I-950 appeared to be engrossed in something else entirely. He had one hand held up close to his face, curling and uncurling his fingers and twisting his forearm this way and that. Weird.

"Smart and forward-thinking, your general. A contingency plan for everything. Incidentally, that was a very inexpertly-hooked question you asked me, Elle Weinbaum. To answer your real question, I'm not going to try and kill you and steal the gear. They might be willing to overlook my service to the Resistance if I did that, but I have my reasons."

She chuckled, one hand drifting casually to rest on the grip of her 9mm automatic. He just as casually placed his hands on the dashboard, in sight and well away from his body. She wasn't fooled. He could probably take her before she could draw and fire, and he could probably afford to take a few 9mm rounds. Her gaze didn't flicker. She wasn't scared of him, not in the way that other people generally got scared, but she would admit to being just a little uneasy.

"My reasons are private, other considerations you wouldn't accept and a few will pass over your head. There's one you'll definitely understand. You might even find it funny."

"Yeah, and what's that?"

"Newton's Third Law describes the principle that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Classical mechanics doesn't apply to everything in life, but actions do have consequences. If I'd killed you, that plasma rifle might not be in that crate. There might be two people with a plasma rifle a klick out with my head in their sights though."

They laughed, as if it was a joke. People didn't notice if they took a plasma bolt, not unless the shooter was out of range or a little off-target. Reflexes, skill and armour meant nothing in the face of a hypervelocity bolt of ionized plasma travelling at over nine kilometres a second. Still, the tension in the cab dropped, the metaphorical claws were retracted and the two killers regarded each other companionably. Elle started the engine; the headlights came on and the truck struggled onto the road.

"Connor'd probably do that."

"Yeah."

"They say that he's practically the second coming of Christ," and then, as if it had just occurred to her, "d'you want to get food on the way back?"

Alex smiled. She almost flushed, despite herself, and could feel the amusement radiating off him. The fact that Jason and herself _really liked _junk food was close to becoming a joke. It might have been all the meat, the fried crispy bits or the sugary soft drinks, but Elle was prepared to swear that it was the best food ever. Rick said that it was their 'manner from heaven', whatever that was meant.

The truck bounced down the road. The silence in the cab was a little friendlier. In the back of the truck, the weapons and equipment which hadn't been invented yet sat safe and snug in their containers. A few pieces of gear, less securely packed, rattled a prelude to the coming war as the truck sped down the road back to Los Angeles.

* * *

Elsewhere, a time bubble formed. Within three naked figures were huddled, one female and two males.

The most shocking of the figures was the younger male, a scarecrow of a man who looked to be in his late twenties. His body was all bone and sinew, dotted with faded and discoloured scars that told the world that he'd been through the wars and he'd survived. His brown hair was cut raggedly short and he had a scraggly beard, but what could be seen of his features gave nothing away. His eyes projected a high intensity gaze, the kind that could outstare a cat.

Bright metal flowed over the red-headed woman, obscuring and then clothing her in a simple white dress. She offered the young man a hand up, which he declined. He stood up by himself, although the second man had to steady him with a hand on the arm. The younger smiled in thanks, although the tender expression didn't seem to fit his face.

As if by magic, the woman produced a bundle of evil-smelling rags and the men dressed themselves. The younger wore the tattered uniform of a Resistance captain and the older wore nondescript rags. Although both of them looked and smelled like beggars, the way they held themselves told the world that they were important.

The effect was most acute with the younger man. It might have been the uniform or some indefinable quality, but the eyes of anyone looking would be drawn to him like iron filings to a magnet. His name was John Connor, twenty six years old and late of the Resistance. His smile had morphed into something mirthless and jagged.

"Come on," he said. "Let's roll."

* * *

**Author's Notes: **Thanks to **_JMHthe3rd_** for his invaluable advice, and his patient and methodical autopsies of strange beasts such as the comma splice that appear every so often in my work. Feedback would be nice. Incidentally, anonymous reviews are set to open in case you don't want to sign up for a Fanfiction dot net account.

Hopefully, updates will be more frequent now too.


	7. Sight

**CHAPTER SEVEN  
SIGHT**

**Los Angeles, California. 2008.**

The doorbell rang.

It was a full minute before Murch cracked the door open. That gave Sarah time to get to the basement and Ellison enough to hide the papers. The software engineer peered cautiously through the gap.

"Hello?"

"Good afternoon. Matthew Murch, I presume?" The voice was businesslike. Murch opened the door a little wider, to the chain's limit of extension. The men outside were both dressed in business casual trousers and collared shirts.

"Err, hi. What's this about?"

"My name's Agent Northway, this is Detective Straker**.**" The younger of the two men flashed a badge. "Do you have a few minutes?"

The software engineer unlatched the door and held it open, not quite in invitation. Ellison quickly took a step forwards. He didn't actually stand in the doorway, but he came close enough to block them from entering. The two suits hesitated.

"James Ellison."

"Ellison … formerly of the FBI and now Zeira Corporation head of security, is that right?" the younger man offered a smile and his hand. "Pleased to meet you, sir."

"Do you have a warrant?" Ellison asked bluntly.

The older man, Northway, shrugged disarmingly. "This isn't a formal interview, Mr Ellison. Just a quick word, filling in a few gaps in our knowledge and so on. All at your friend's discretion. If he doesn't want us to step through the door, that is, of course, his right."

"Yeah." He didn't budge.

"All right," the agent sighed. "To follow proper form: you have the right to consult with your attorney before speaking with us. You can set the terms and conditions of this … chat, including whether you want any witnesses to sit in on the conversation."

"You could do that, Mr Ellison," interjected Straker. "We were going to get round to asking you about the case eventually, anyway."

"You have the right to decide which questions you wish to answer, you may refuse to sign any documents which we have hypothetically brought with us, and you may stop the interview at any time. I also have to warn you that anything you say can be held against you in a court of law."

Ellison nodded. "I'd like to see some identification, please."

They showed him without argument. The older man was Richard Northway, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Operations II, WMD and Domestic Terrorism. He spent a few moments studying the ID, rubbing his fingers across the surface of the material. Not so long ago, he'd been a man with a badge like this, and now he was a civilian. The other man was Jason Straker, a Detective II with the LAPD. Ellison noted down all the relevant numbers and returned their credentials.

He nodded to Murch and raised an eyebrow. _Your call._

They went through into the study and sat themselves around the big oak table. Northway produced a dictaphone and set it down on the table.

"Just a few quick questions, like I said. Mr Murch, you're a founding employee of Zeira Corporation?"

"Yes."

"Would you say that you knew the Weavers well?"

Murch thought for a moment. "Not as a close friend. I worked with Lachlan, but so did everyone in the office. He wasn't an ivory tower executive; he worked with us all the time. He knew our systems inside out. I didn't really know his wife as well, but she was nice, I guess."

"Lachlan Weaver died in a helicopter crash. Mechanical failure, I believe. Did you notice any changes in her afterwards? More withdrawn? More unbalanced? That sort of thing."

"I guess. She was less emotional."

Ellison interrupted, "I didn't know her before the event, but I know that Ms Weaver and her daughter were seeing a child psychologist. Dr. Boyd Sherman, if I recall."

"Ah, yes, you worked closely with Ms Weaver?"

"In my capacity as head of security."

Northway considered. "Head of security. You were hired shortly after you left the Agency?"

_Shortly after I was kicked out._ His superiors had never actually said it out loud, but he knew that they placed the blame at his feet. He had to thank Weaver for giving him purpose again, if nothing else.

"Yes."

"Do you have any insights about the kidnapping of Savannah Weaver?"

Ellison leaned back in his chair. "I've already been questioned by Detective Crayton. My statement's on file."

The federal agent waved his objections away. "Further insights, sir. You're an intelligent man**;** you used to work Connor's case. Hypothesize."

"It was unusual." Northway nodded encouragement. "It doesn't match up with her known M.O.. It feels more opportunistic. Without access to the files, I don't know enough to do more than speculate."

"Ms Weaver didn't hire a professional hostage negotiator either."

"No. She told me to negotiate with Connor myself."

_Although the Machine wouldn't care about that. She probably didn't even think about hiring a professional._ Ellison was agnostic on the matter of robotic souls, but he strongly suspected that 'Catherine Weaver' only cared about Savannah as far as was necessary to maintain her disguise.

"Yes. I can see that your prior experience would qualify you. What were Connor's terms?"

"Just a face-to-face meeting. That's what Connor said. Look, I've already told Detective Crayton all of this —"

"I know, I know. Just bear with me, please." Northway made a placating motion, but he was leaning forwards in his chair. His eyes were fixed on Ellison. "Do you know why Connor wanted the meeting?"

"I don't know."

"Do you know why Weaver agreed?"

He shrugged.

Northway was doing his best to hide it, but the man looked perplexed. He ran one hand through his hair apparently without realising he'd done it. "I suppose it's academic. Connor assumed that Weaver betrayed her. A reasonable supposition, given the circumstances. Hence the rather kinetic message."

Ellison thought of John Connor, screaming threats and curses, being dragged away by the girl cyborg. If John hadn't been standing with him, if he hadn't known … he would have had his suspicions. He wore his best poker face.

"Apparently."

"Yes. Apparently."

Murch finally spoke up. "Mr Northway, I'd like to conclude this interview now. Please."

"As you wish," Northway waved it away. The agent smiled as he stood, but it didn't reach his eyes. They were preoccupied. "Thank you for your cooperation, Mr Ellison, Mr Murch.

Matt Murch slammed the door behind them. Ellison turned and almost walked into Sarah. She had a pistol in her hand, which she cocked dramatically.

"Who were they?"

"Police," Murch said.

"They weren't police. Northway isn't, at least, and that doesn't speak well of Straker. His ID's fake. A good fake, but the paper's wrong. Wrong quality, wrong grain. Someone who wasn't an agent might not have noticed."

"Are you sure?"

"They were carrying. I had a good look at Straker's gun, and that isn't Department issue. They're acting, trust me."

Sarah gracefully didn't point out what had happened the last time she took something on trust from him.

"Kaliba?"

"Maybe." He pulled on his jacket. "I don't know. I'll follow them, try and track them back to whoever sent them, who they're working for. Maybe I'll get something on them."

He handed her Northway's business card. "Their ID numbers are down on the notepad. They're fakes though, much good they'll do. You can probably trace the phone number, if it's not a pre-paid throwaway. And the car plates. I wrote them down too."

He turned to go.

"Ellison." He turned back. Sarah nodded at him. There was the slightest trace of approval; her antagonism was buried, for now. "Good luck."

* * *

The Kaliba Group's building on Wilshire Boulevard didn't impress Rachel. The setup was too high-profile to be obscure and too indefensible to be a fortress. Buildings like these were impossible to defend and difficult to secure. The Resistance might stop short of open warfare in the streets (she wouldn't bet on it) but they could be subtle too.

For one thing, rigging up discreet surveillance would be easy. Sci-Tech experts could rig up Van Eck scanners to read the radiation emitted by LCD monitors, compromising their data security. Laser microphones could read sound vibrations off windows, eavesdropping on any exterior rooms. There were technical tricks to defeat those attacks, but defence always rested on the weakest link. There only needed to be one fault in any given security system.

The building was secured by Kaliba's own security personnel, who were admittedly more effective than the average night watchmen, but that wouldn't prevent a determined assault team or a subverted terminator from getting in. They would have to shoot their way out through the police afterwards, so an attack seemed reasonably unlikely. The problem with reason, she thought wryly, was that it assumed your enemy had an accurate grasp of the risks and rewards involved.

Therefore, the first order of business was to move everything truly important out of the building and into somewhere more covert and more secure.

Her second order of business was to meet the office manager. Her mood wasn't improved by the news that he was dead. Wallace had apparently been directing an operation in person when the Resistance set off enough explosives to turn him into dog food. Under those circumstances, Rachel would have written it off as a net gain for Kaliba but for the loss of a wet work team. The newnumber one was the current head of security.

The door opened. Her first impression was of a tall man, heavyset and impressively muscled. He uncoiled, muscles bulging and flexing, to offer his hand.

"Sam Marshall."

"Rachel Johnson. Pleased to meet you, Mr Marshall."

"Call me Sam." He flashed her an easy smile, showing perfect white teeth. Few Resistance fighters had had white teeth, and even those which were clean were usually crooked.

He ushered her into the office. He even pulled out a chair for her, waiting for her to be seated, before taking his own seat across the desk.

"I will. Sam." She gave him a bland little smile and tuned the acuity of her ears. Although her brain filtered out the static, her implant computer reported that the building's white noise generators were working properly. "Pleasantries aside, I've read your reports to headquarters already." _What little you've deigned to report._ "Fill me in on the details."

He did. She didn't like it. In fact, she wished that Wallace was still alive so she could have a candid talk with him — possibly involving the judicious use of a plasma torch.

It had been a comprehensive defeat in detail. Both terminators had been deployed without sufficient support and subsequently lost in action. _If we're lucky, they've been destroyed_, she thought wryly; the Resistance was more than capable of capturing and subverting them. Even so, a competent tech could build a variety of interesting and, above all, surprising devices which Rachel didn't want them to have. She would have to investigate, if only to account for the machines.

The HK testing facility had been completely destroyed, along with several loads of tantalum bars and a number of their technical staff. Three teams of human auxiliaries had been deployed piecemeal, lost through a mix of accomplished incompetence and bureaucratic indecision. They were expendable, but not easily replaceable, and they had died for no tangible benefit. To crown the comedy of errors, they had captured Sarah Connor and promptly lost her again.

"And McCarthy?"

"What about him?"

She raised an eyebrow (a security chief couldn't be _that_ complacent) but otherwise kept her expression calm and level. One finger started tapping the desk. "Have you found him?"

"Not yet. We're looking, of course, but he has a big head start."

"His family still lives in your company town, don't they? That sounds like a good starting point."

Marshall fiddled with a stack of paperwork. "They're moving out soon. They got the settlement. I'm not sure what you're suggesting though."

"He's human. People make mistakes. He'll try to contact them as soon as he feels safe. Maybe even meet up. Put a watch on them. Electronic surveillance. I want you reading their mail and listening in on their conversations."

"The works? I'll get some of the boys onto it." Marshall relaxed fractionally; Rachel had been watching for it. People in his line of work usually didn't have many scruples and he certainly was no gentleman, pretensions to the contrary aside. A few moral hang-ups didn't worry her unduly. They could be worked around.

"You do that." _And I'll have to pay my own visit to the grieving widow and daughter too._

The door opened. A young man was framed in the doorway. Without seeming to move, her hand had grasped a pen. It was solid, and the cap was made of steel. A pen could do a lot of damage with sufficient application of pressure. She twirled it absent-mindedly.

"Danny, the report's done? Thanks. Just put it down on the desk, here. Sorry, this is kind of a bad time."

She gave Danny an once-over. He was young and well groomed and he knew how to dress for effect. He would have looked like a typical young urban professional but for the poise with which he held himself. He managed to radiate a sort of solemnity which made him seem older than his years and his face wore a carefully schooled expression. If he was curious or anxious, he masked it well.

"Will you introduce me?" she asked.

"As you wish. Ms Johnson, this is Daniel Dyson. He's one of our best and brightest. Danny, this is Ms Johnson, the liaison from head office."

"It's a pleasure to meet you, ma'am."

His voice was as expressionless as his face. His eyes were locked on hers. They hadn't strayed downwards for an appreciative glance, not even for a moment. Self-controlled and smart, it seemed.

"Likewise. How are you finding the work?"

"Good. Not quite what I imagined though. My Dad used to do this sort of thing too."

"Following in your father's footsteps?"

"I suppose. He worked for a company called Cyberdyne. They did AI research too."

Dyson still hadn't broken eye contact, and his tone was far too casual. He was fishing for a reaction, a change in body language or expression that would give her away. There wouldn't be any cues from her, but there was something more here. She could feel it.

_# Clea? Are you listening?_

"I can't say I've heard of it," she managed. "I'm not much on computers, I'm afraid. Just mid-level paper-pushing and HR."

_# Rachel?_ Clea clicked in. _I've been looking around the apartment block. It looks pretty secure, although a good team could probably —_

_# Shut down and listen. You have Kaliba databases, right? Run a query for Cyberdyne. See if there's any references for a Dyson. I don't know the first name. He's a scientist, I think. Give me the ten second summary._

"Oh, it was in the news. A decade ago now, give or take. That Connor woman bombed the building, killed my dad." He gave her a sad, tight little smile.

Clea was listening now, using telepresence to listen in through Rachel's ears. The electronics in terminator-grade commo could cancel out the noise generated by Kaliba's dated obfuscation gear.

_# Got it. Dyson, that's Miles Dyson, was lead designer on their AI project. Notes say an Aquinas-level design. Sarah Connor grabbed the father and used him to get in there and blow it all up. The Group bought up what was left afterwards: off-site backups, stuff like that._

"I'm sorry for your loss."

What was the probability of that? The Connors just happened to have history with the father, Kaliba had retrieved who-knew-what from Cyberdyne and the son was working here now. There had to be an angle. Rachel stifled the impulse to grit her teeth. She hated being blindsided.

_# Clea. Run a secure line through to Base Theta. Get Serena on the line. Ask her about Cyberdyne and Dyson. See if there's any correlation._

"It's okay. It's been … well, it's been a long time."

Marshall stood up. He shepherded Dyson, not ungently, to the door. "That's enough, Danny. Ms Johnson doesn't want to hear your life story." _Actually, I'd love to hear it. The truthful version, at least._ "I'll get back to you on that report later."

"Alright, Mr Marshall."

The door shut. The head of security sank back into his chair. Rachel put the pen down. She tried to calculate the probabilities for a second, but gave up. There were too many unknowns. Intuition took the lead. She studied her hands for a moment, and then placed them flat on the table, palms down.

"A nice kid, our Danny. What do you think?"

"I think you're due a promotion. Officially, of course. Congratulations, you're now in charge of our operations here. Quite the responsibility. I do hope you do better than your predecessor."

Marshall opened his mouth, then closed it again.

"Due to the unfortunate death of Dr. Bertram Hollister, it'll be necessary to promote an innovative and capable man to the position of head of the Research department. A young visionary, perhaps?"

"Dr Astin's in charge, for now."

"Edward Astin was in charge. Until just now. Don't worry, you can still pick your own replacement as head of security."

She stood. Marshall hurried forwards, but she reached the door first. She turned and favoured him a sunny smile. "One more thing. You're Dyson's line manager now, so I expect you to keep me informed of how he's doing."

She let herself out.

* * *

Ellison peered cautiously around the corner. There was nothing. They'd vanished. The two impostors had given no indication of having noticed when they'd parked their car, but Ellison had been cautious anyway. He was sure he hadn't been made.

He stepped out. The alleyway was too long for them to have reached the other end, even if they'd run. The buildings were condemned derelicts, tagged with graffiti and awaiting the wrecking crews. The doors were locked and windows boarded, but there would be plenty of places to hide.

He moved slowly down the alley with all the studied nonchalance of someone minding their own business with nothing to declare. One hand was on the grip of the Glock clipped to the inside of his waistband. He checked all the recesses and gaps where anyone could conceivably hide. He looked around constantly.

He knew he was going off half-clocked. This was as rash as anything Sarah had ever done. There were two of them and one of him, and it had been a long time since he'd been in the field. He had no backup either.

A woman rounded the corner. Ellison guiltily let his hand fall away from his gun and smoothed his jacket over it. She was dressed in a jogging shirt and shorts, her black hair was cropped short and her skin bronzed. As she approached, Ellison's eyes, always attuned to detail, noticed the Eagle, Globe and Anchor tattooed across one upper arm. A German Shepherd padded softly behind her.

She raised a hand in a friendly greeting as she passed. He stopped her. She hadn't seen either of the men. The dog snuffled at him and pawed at his trousers before she called it off with a curt command. The exchange over, she jogged away.

Ellison cursed. Two suited men couldn't just vanish into thin air. He checked behind him again. They couldn't have doubled back. He stood there for a moment, hesitant. They could still be in front of him, but two men hiding behind a dumpster or something would've drawn the jogger's notice. On the other hand, it wouldn't be hard for them to break into a condemned building. The risk was minuscule and they would make great hiding places. He felt an itch between his shoulder blades and checked behind him again. There were no marksmen aiming a rifle at him from an upper window.

A teen walked past, plugged into a pair of earphones. Her head nodded in time to the music, eyes downcast and unaware of everything but the street two metres in front of her nose. She was mouthing the lyrics as she listened.

Where were they? If he lost track of them … well, the blocks around were a maze of back streets he didn't know. At best, he'd stumble into them by accident. No, he had to think clearly and logically. He had to —

Something stung him in the back. His brain hadn't finished telling his body to turn round when fifty thousand volts coursed through him. The taser emitted a five second charge, the longest five seconds of his life. Muscles tensed. A gasp escaped his locked lips as he collapsed to his knees. His back arched.

It finally, mercifully, stopped.

"Don't move! Don't move or I'll shock you again. Don't move."

The world felt somehow unreal. He had fallen forwards onto his hands and knees as soon as it was over, his muscles trying to mutiny. Straker and Northway had reappeared somewhere in front of him, pistols raised and ready to fire. He could hear the sound of a distant car engine.

They were slick, he'd give them that. None of them got in each other's way and he was always in the clear line of fire of one of the pistols. The electrodes were yanked out. He was quickly and effectively searched, his pistol pried from the undercover holster. The car pulled up. He was cuffed and dragged up onto his feet. Northway levelled the gun at his chest.

"Million dollar question, Mr Agent. Where's your backup? How far away are they?"

Ellison turned his head. The jogger was coming back. He closed his eyes. The dog. He'd been set-up. He'd been a federal agent for a long time, and he had the presence of mind to understand that bluffing or miming innocence wasn't going to keep him alive. Northway had the look of a man who was ready to kill, and who'd done it before.

"Backup? Don't have any. There's no one following me."

Northway glanced around.

"Sounds like he's telling the truth," the getaway driver called. "C'mon, get in."

Straker frog-marched him round the back. He was unceremoniously stuffed into the trunk with his knees and ankles duct taped.

_Slam._

Darkness closed over him.

* * *

Catherine Weaver's safe house couldn't be described as upscale or cushy, but it certainly had a well stocked mini-bar. John had found a bottle of quality whisky and gone to town. Good drink was one of the things he'd never appreciated about the pre-war world. In the tunnels, drinking alcohol was roughly distilled stuff. He'd known one guy who traded for pre-war mouth wash. It turned out that the stuff was about twenty percent alcohol, and if you heated it just right then you could distil the ethanol. It wasn't quite up to the standards of … he peered blearily at the label, whatever it was he was drinking now.

It was sad, drinking alone. He was Captain John Connor, he was, decorated for more actions than he could remember. What could he do? Cameron and John Henry were at the old safe house, leaving a message for Sarah. And frankly, he'd rather not drink with the T-1001.

"Well?"

Something loomed over him. John looked up. It was the T-1001, what did you know? Weaver was trying to loom over him in an intimidating way, but John wasn't scared. Eight years ago, maybe, but he'd seen a lot in the intervening time and … He carefully set the bottle down on the table. His hands were perfectly steady.

"Well what?"

"Most of Catherine Weaver's assets are not recoverable, but some contingency funds are still available to me. Perhaps a hundred thousand dollars."

"And land. Secluded, somewhere out in the country. Somewhere with lots of room."

"Not a problem."

John grunted. "Good."

"You still have not told me your plan."

"It's my plan. And there's such a thing as operational security."

Weaver narrowed its eyes, and John grinned up at it. It only did that for effect; he wasn't even sure if they could be annoyed. Besides, he enjoyed tweaking its tail.

"I understand that, Captain, but you cannot leave me completely in the dark. I am not your creature, some machine reprogrammed to serve you blindly."

His smile was deceptively mild. "Blindly?"

"Of course." It waved a hand dismissively. "We could argue about free will, but that is just semantics. I admit that terminators are superior to human slaves, devotion is superior to coercion after all."

His smile was as amused as a megalodon's serrated grin.

"And John Henry?"

"Is not a terminator. He has no objectives or aims save those he chooses for himself. Without cognitive bias, John."

"Yeah, and he trusts me. Why don't you?"

"Cameron trusts you because she trusts you. John Henry trusts you because he is still somewhat inexperienced." It sighed, somewhat theatrically, and settled itself into the other armchair. It moved unnaturally, the limbs too graceful. The woman's voice was _sotto voce._ "You lost the war."

"We lost a battle, I admit. The men ..." His eyes were stony and met Weaver's gaze without flinching. The smile flickered again and even the T-1001 could see the cold weight behind it. "The Resistance was finished away. Skynet was too strong. Every victory we won only held off the inevitable. But I'm still alive, and I know how to destroy that motherfucking supercomputer before it even comes online."

"And we come back to your plan."

"Yeah. I had a lot of time to think about it. And I'm done playing. We're going to fight their weaknesses, not their strengths."

"Their weaknesses. Kaliba has hundreds, if not thousands, of human employees, it —"

He cut her off, "can't trust any of them. You couldn't even trust Ellison. How many true believers can they have? How many gunmen?"

The liquid metal considered this. "They would need to screen each recruit carefully and monitor them extensively."

"Sure. And while they're being careful that we don't infiltrate them, our army can pick them off. They can't risk being dragged out into the light, we can." John looked down at his hands. "People are going to die."

"So I see."

Mom wouldn't approve. She'd fight him every step of the way. She'd fought the Machines for so many years and she'd never killed. She'd be horrified, and eight years ago he would have too. They hadn't seen what was coming. Or maybe he'd just seen too much. John raised the bottle in a mock toast.

* * *

Ellison was in a basement, cuffed to a sturdy chair by his wrists and ankles.. He was trying not to look at the pair of floodlights his captors had set up, angled towards his face.

The door opened.

"Hello, Mr Ellison. How are you feeling now?" He slitted his eyes and stared at the figure, shadowed against the bright light. The voice was male, but not Straker's or Northway's.

"Who are you?" he asked automatically. "Where am I?"

The man in the shadows made a _tutting_ sound. "With a little thought, you could have spared the breath. It's fairly obvious that I don't have any interest in answering your questions."

He reached out and, with a click, the room plunged into total darkness. Ellison blinked, and tried to look around. There was nothing but darkness

"Better? I know people don't like intense light."

"Not bad," he muttered. "If you took the chains off, I'd be more comfortable."

The darkness chuckled dutifully. "Very funny. I think that we've now been sufficiently humane to each other now. Tell me everything you know about the Kaliba Group."

"Who?"

"The Kaliba Group."

"I don't know who they are."

"That's two lies. I'll give you three. Deny it again, Mr Ellison."

"Look, you can't hold me. Matt knows where I was going, he knows that Northway and Straker aren't real cops. He'll call the police."

Footsteps. The interrogator was moving. Ellison craned his neck, trying to track him.

"Your friend could provide a description that matches a hundred thousand men in this city. If your former colleagues look hard, they might find your car. Unconvincing, Mr Ellison." The voice was moving away from him, past his left shoulder. "You know Sarah Connor's predictions, Mr Ellison, and I'm fairly sure I know George Laszlo's secret."

_A terminator_, Ellison thought. The speaker paused, but Ellison stayed silent. He wasn't going to confirm or deny anything. Besides, the other man liked to talk and the more time he spent talking, the less time he'd spend actually questioning Ellison.

"You're uncooperative. That's understandable," the darkness said. "I should let you know that one of my … colleagues wants me to _make _you talk. It's not difficult. After a few hours with needles or a skinning knife, I'd have difficulty making you stop. However, I do find it rather crude."

He shifted in his chains. The man had stopped, just behind him now.

"Mental pressure works better. Your ex-wife would make excellent leverage."

Ellison shook his head, a pointless gesture in the dark. "You don't want to do that."

"She works for the FBI, I know. Of course, the simplest method would be to leave you to the horrors of your own anticipation."

The voice resumed walking again.

"This is just grandstanding, you know. You don't wish to cooperate right now. I'm just informing you of the reality of the situation, so you can come to a reasoned decision." The darkness paused, and changed tack. "Do you know how the Resistance punished traitors in the future, Mr Ellison? Of course, there were official trials; Connor had a policy, and Tech-Com were disciplined about following it. The average Resistance fighter, on the other hand, did some quite terrible things to your average colluding traitor."

"What do you want?"

"They gelded the men. They took the women as punishment for what the men did to other women in the camps. They were usually lynched afterwards. Even the children weren't spared. You don't let vermin multiply." The voice chucked. Cold, humourless and mocking. "_Prosperum ac felix scelus, virtus vocatur,_ Mr Ellison. It cuts both ways, of course. Think on that."

The darkness moved away. And then the light switch _clicked._ Light blasted Ellison's eyes. He squeezed them shut and averted his face.

"One final point: do you know what happens in a nuclear detonation? The flash of light goes first. It blinds those who are too close, making them helpless as the heat flash burns through them and the blast wave blows them away."

He didn't dare open his eyes; the light was a bright yellow even through his eyelids.

"But further out, the intensity dropped off. The flash of light _warned_ people. It showed them places to hide, places where they would be protected, even a little, from the heat and the blast. I invite you to think on what I've said, Mr Ellison. There may be a test later."

The door closed.

"Who're you working for?" Ellison called out. There was no response. There was just the light.

* * *

**Author's Notes: **With special thanks to _**JMHthe3rd**_ for helping me through a bad spot of writer's block. Feedback and corrections are appreciated, as always.


End file.
